Chrome Yellow

What a brilliant name for a shop that sells artists’ materials. Yes, Leamington Spa has its own specialist outlet which artists can visit and choose in the flesh, so to speak, brushes, paints, canvases, artists’ pencils and charcoal, pastels and sketchbooks etc; and all in the leading art brands of Britain & Europe today: Winsor & Newton, Sennelier, Royal Talens, Hahneühle, & Derwent to name a few. Chrome Yellow also run three drawing sessions every week – Life Drawing on Monday & Wednesday evenings and Portrait Drawing on Thursday evenings. How wonderful to be able to handle such possibilities and linger and ponder in the presence of the instruments that they can use to make their art.

There’s many a town, which would love to have such a shop. What’s more the owners are practising artists themselves and therefore able to discuss the finer points of this brush or that paint and the infinite ways of making art. What is more, it is located in the High Street in Leamington Spa, and therefore most accessible.

Now why mention a shop in an academic art journal? Apart from what has already been stated as a grotto of infinite possibilities for the mature artist who knows what they want, and the wisdom dispensed to those who are just beginning, Chrome Yellow, is turning some of its walls into hanging spaces and thus, in addition to becoming a small art gallery. Here there will be the opportunity of showing artists’ work, paintings, drawings, etchings and so on, in the context of the materials from which they are made. The three separate wall spaces that are available are the following, for hire by artists: 10 ft x 8 ft, for artwork by Jonathan and Suminder: 8 ft x 8 ft, and for selected work by Chrome Yellow Arts guest artist: 11 ft x 8 ft. Not that this concept is new for there are many such ventures in Paris and other capital cities, so it seems that Royal Leamington Spa is joining the hierarchy. Every such outlet should be hailed as a heroic gesture of openness and encouragement for the public to have the opportunity to look at art. The shop will be run by artists for artists, Suminder and Jonathan, but the gallery will be run for the people, that so necessary, special ingredient. It is they who add the living, vital essence for artists and art, their love. It is they who provide the soil out of which the artist grows, fostering, encouraging, buying and loving art. So large or small every opportunity to provide space for artists to show their work is part of this huge social interaction between production and consumption. Chrome Yellow by providing such space and participating is part of the thrilling drama, of a world wide scenario of art, for the people by the people.