Broughty Ferry Art Society are holding their first online exhibition in its 40-year history.
The society, which usually holds an exhibition during the Broughty Ferry gala week, has displayed some of its art work online, as a response to the pandemic.
The society’s last exhibition was held in 2019, which also celebrated 40-years of the armature art group. But now, they hope to be able to reach more people by displaying artwork online.
Dorothy Walker, president of the society, said: “Although we’re an amateur society – in the sense we’re non-profit making – we wanted to reach out to the wider community.
“The online presence has been set up fro the whole community of Broughty Ferry.
“We want to eventually expand it. However, our new exhibition has been the first time we’ve had to have members actually put work online.
“We have a membership that runs from beginners to highly professional and skilled artists.”
While the society primarily focuses on painting and drawing, they have members who create jewellery and textile artwork too.
Members were welcomed to masterclasses where different artists showed off various techniques, as well as having art classes three times a week.
Pandemic
But due to the pandemic, Dorothy said these were not able to go ahead this past year.
She said: “The lockdown has affected the society in the way that its affected everyone.
“We haven’t been able to have our monthly meetings. They were before lockdown, very well attended.
“We would have talks and demonstrators, so that’s been really missed by a lot of the membership.
“The other thing we do is we run, and hope to again in the future, one evening class and two afternoon classes and they were also very well attended.”
The group has also had to put a hold on running art classes at the primary schools in the area.
However, the pandemic also allowed members to develop some new skills, including getting to grips with technology.
Dorothy said: “We’ve also learned things for the future and we’re going to take ahead a good exhibition. We’ve developed some of the skills through the pandemic, and learned how to move forward and be a modern, relevant society for the area.”
The group hope to get back to hosting shows later this year, Dorothy said.
She added: “We also had the summer exhibition, that we weren’t able to run last year. It’s usually at the end of June, beginning of July – during the Broughty Ferry gala week.
“However, this year, we’ve decided to put it back by a month.”
The exhibition has been planned out to be safe and follow social distancing regulations.
You can view Broughty Ferry Art Society’s online exhibition here.
