The International Society of Scratchboard Artists Annual Exhibition, South Australia 2017
One of the criticisms levelled at me, fairly, is that I don’t know how to sell myself. Well, today I’m selling myself. In 2010 I had an idea to create a scratchboard society. I knew this had been tried before and failed. I was also warned that I would probably fail too. The idea was born out of the frustration that many scratchboard artists felt when shows and exhibitions didn’t know where to put us. They would often say “what media is this?” and we would say “scratchboard”, to which they would reply “oh, you belong with crafts!”
This was always a kick in the teeth. I’m not criticising crafts, but scratchboard is and always has been a fine art medium which means we belong with fine art mediums. All we needed to do was to
