Sargent and the Sea

Yesterday I went to the Sargent and the Sea exhibition in one of my favourite galleries - The Sackler Wing at the Royal Academy. http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/sargent-and-the-sea/

It's a wonderful exhibition, with some of his most dramatic seascapes in oils. There were also lots of sketches, scrapbooks and studies for some of the paintings. One whole room focused almost entirely on The Oyster Gatherers of Cancale, painted in 1878, with sketches and oil-painting studies of the people in the painting. There were also some fantastic watercolours of boats and the canals in Venice.

I came away feeling very inspired.

Marzia Colonna - Dorset Art Week

Today is the start of Dorset Art Week. My mother and I went to see the work of local scultptress Marzia Colonna. There were pieces on display in her purpose-built studio, a beautifully serene space with several rooms; and throughout her garden. You can see a little of her work here http://www.marziacolonna.com/. Her recent collages are mostly of Dorset landscapes. The most striking ones show the dramatic cliffs and seascapes along the Jurassic Coast. Her style suits the landscape here perfectly and I fell in love with her collages of the cliffs at Burton Bradstock.

I also love the sculpture in my photographs, which stands in her garden.

I love sculpture and I love collages; Colonna's work is fantastic. One day I hope I'll own one of her pieces.

Sequoia Bespoke

Sequoia-title

I've been doing some more work on Sequoia Bespoke. You can find the website here http://www.sequoiabespoke.co.uk/

 
I'm working on their SEO at the moment. All terribly boring to most people, but somehow it appeals to me. I like the challenge of trying to get a company onto page 1 of Google. This should help - Blogs and other social media such as Facebook and Twitter are one of the best ways of increasing a company's visibility. And in case you're wondering why my own company doesn't show up on page 1 of Google and Yahoo... well, I'm not actively promoting it at the moment. And I reckon it will be a much bigger challenge getting a website design website on page 1 as you would expect website design companies to be very hot on doing just that - therefore the competition is potentially much tougher. We'll see when I'm ready for that challenge.
 
The first step in optimising a company's visibility is to decide exactly what keywords you think a potential client/customer will type into their search engine.
 
Sequoia Bespoke make high quality custom made furniture for the home, including bedrooms, kitchens, bathrooms, media units and bookcases, so all of those are potential keywords; add in the location - in this case St Albans, Harpenden and North London, and a few other key terms that people might use, such as 'cabinet maker' or 'hand made furniture' and you've got quite a list to be going on with.