Daily Archives: March 26, 2025

Final week of the Spring Art Sale at Upstate Dispatch: Thursday March 27 to Saturday March 29, 2025 1-5pm

© Jenny Neal 2.30pm – Usage prohibited without consent

This is the final week for the 2025 Spring Sale here at Upstate Dispatch Studios in March. I’ll be open on Thursday, Friday & Saturday this week from 1pm – 5pm.

I will be offering discounts on framed photography of up to 50% on some works. All discounts will be based on each individual piece.

So come and get some sketches, watercolors, magazines, postcards and framed photography at reasonable prices.

Upstate Dispatch Spring Sale:

Thursday March 27, Friday March 28 & Saturday March 29, 2025.

Time: 1 – 5pm

Address: The Commons Building, 2nd Floor, 785 Main Street, Margaretville, NY 12455.

All The Nudes Fit To Print

© Jenny Neal – Usage prohibited without consent

No nudes is bad news.

I joined the Catskills life drawing group back in 2016 and I credit these weekly sessions, that only paused during the pandemic, for improving not only my sketching skills, but also my observational skills. The human form is the most difficult subject to draw and I’m only just beginning to draw feet after almost ten years of practice. I’ve given myself a goal of decent hands by the end of the year.

I have lived for this habit over the years. For three hours, I shut out the world with intense focus. Our little group of dedicated life drawers, assembles wherever we can, sometimes in the Upstate Dispatch studio, whenever we can, in all weathers.

This past winter, we dedicated artists have braved all the atrocious Catskills weather, the bone-crunching frigid temperatures that freeze the fluid in your eyeballs, emerging from our snug hiding places to hone our skill at ArtUp, organized by Gary Mayer. Not to mention our brave models that bare all for us for three hours every week, after having driven from far-flung corners of the region.

The result of this past winter’s work is the new exhibition “Skin and Bone”, at ArtUp in Margaretville.

Participating artists: Suzanne Ausnit, Steve Burnett, Chris Criswell, Sandra Finkenberg, Patrice Lorenz, Gary Mayer, Joe Miller and myself, Jenny Neal, all representing wildly differing styles, all dedicated observers of the human form. I have sixty small nudes on offer including the one pictured above. Last week, a fellow artist described me as follows: “you paint like you’re whispering in someone’s ear” after I told them that I paint like somebody who can’t afford paint; less is more, my brush seems to be saying.

Gary Mayer, who organized the winter sessions says: “intense observation and concentration unites our little group of artists and model, once a week”.

The show runs until Sunday April 6. Opening reception: Friday March 28, 4-7pm. 

ArtUp, 746 Main Street, Binnekill Square, Margaretville, NY 12455.