'It has bothered me all my life that I don't paint like everyone else' Henri Matisse was born in 1869 and died in 1954. His statement now sounds very odd doesn't it. These days everyone is striving to be distinctly different and to stand out from the crowd, somehow. In Henri's prime, conventionality must have been the measure of success. He was born at the dawn of 'Impressionism' which was horribly criticized by the establishment. I guess all the Impressionist painters strug

Enormous progress has been made to protect Vietnam's endangered wildlife since I arrived here in 2012. Traffickers are being jailed and live animals are being rescued from situations. This is my latest painting of an endangered species. The little pangolin is the only mammal with scales and it is the most trafficked mammal in the world. I hope to raise awareness of its plight through my work and I make a donation to Vietnam's wildlife organisations with each sale. We can all

Local artist Phan Thanh Minh has been an artist in Hoi An for over 20 years. He trained as an architect in Saigon but returned ot his home town to paint and what came out, on his canvasses, was a lot of emotion, a lot of anger and discontentment. He is not alone in that. The young artists of Hanoi and Saigon have been trying to express sadness at the loss of traditional values as Vietnam becomes more and more wetsernized, anger at social inequality in a socialist republic nat

Developing an unique signature is very important for artists. Your work can be recognised by the way it is signed so it is important to develope a signature that is difficult to copy. I work in vietnam which is the land of copy artists ...... so this a real issue for me! Here is how I do it........... #art #painting #artist #tips #video #vietnam #tiger #fire #chinesehoroscope #buyart #marchgallery #bridgetmarch

If you would like to create an illustrated travel journal or do some watercolour sketching to record your travel experiences, we have exactly the class for you. First - we will give you techniques and colour skills to make watercolour painting come alive in your imagination. Using only five colours of paint, you will learn how to mix, blend and blur exciting colour combinations. Second - we focus in on four of your senses to make you more present in the moment and help those

'I rarely draw what I see; I draw what I feel in my body' Barbara Hepworth was born in 1910 in Wakefield, UK. She studied at Leeds College of Art and at the Royal Academy, London. She and Henry Moore were part of the modernist movement and were the first to create pierced, abstract sculptures. I relate to Barbara's quote because I do, actually, draw what I see and am very good at it. My training as a designer and my experience of teaching drawing at Leeds College of Art has r

'The mind loves the unknown. It loves images whose meaning is unknown, since the meaning of the mind itself is unknown.' Magritte was born 1898 and struggled all his career to gain recognition for his work. The young artists of the 'Pop Art' movement were greatly influenced by his ideas and these days, his art is familiar to us. I like this quote because it helps me to understand what makes a painting, an etching or a drawing interesting. I paint a lot of landscapes, building

David Hockney was born near my own home town in Yorkshire in 1937 and studied art for 10 years at Bradford School of Art and at The Royal College of Art in London. He and some of his fellow students began the 'Pop Art' movement and he has been a hero of mine for 30 years. In his statement 'The photograph isn't good enough; it isn't real enough' he is talking about the divide between painting and photography. At one time, he experimented with photographic collages to try to ge

If you read my last post ('After he was gone') you will be interested to learn that this painting has become the first of a series of paintings that are expressing a new fascination for me. For the past few years i have been travelling around this fascinating country exploring its famous sights and its intimate places. I have done the tourist trail, wandered the less traveled paths of country locations and walked every alley in central Saigon. The places that give me the deep

Next door to March Gallery is a modest dwelling occupied by a lady who has a Mi Quang and Cao Lao stall every morning on the street corner. The day I took over the lease for the gallery, her father died and so began the week long rituals of a Vietnamese funeral right on my doorstep. This is the room where the wake had been held. Cleaned and shined, ready for the mourners. I came in to sit for 40 minutes and soak in the atmosphere. The death music was still playing in a CD pla

These ancient Vietnamese lions may, one day, replace all the fierce Chines lions that guard banks and hotels today.

On Vietnam's National Day, September 2nd. March Gallery honoured the creativ industries of Vietnam with a private screening of Tran Anh Hung's award winning movie, 'Cyclo' which tells the story of a young man's struggle to survive in the post war chaos of Saigon's city centre streets.To say that this was an extraordinary movie is an understatement. It is hyper real, devastating, chilling, beautiful and layered with symbolism, unexpressed emotions and unspoken explanations. T

Vietnam's rich cultural heritage comes from its diverse ethnic mix. Centuries of trade and migration have seen people from India, Mongolia, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia and all its bordering nations bring their skills and traditions to this wonderful country. One of the most beautiful crafts is to be found in hill tribe textiles. Artists rarely take pages from their sketch books because they are such a personal record of things they have seen, observed and documented

The Hoi An Silk Festival ran from 7th-14th of June, and is part of the larger Quang Nam Heritage Festival which has celebrated its 6th year of operation. The Heritage Festival showcases and enhances Vietnamese cultural values, as well as highlighting provincial cultural characteristics which desirably have strong tourism potentials and incentives for investment in the province. It is also an opportunity to discuss the management and preservation of heritage cultural values am