The S.O.F.A. Blog

FAB celebrates its 50th anniversary with a new book.

The Editor — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 19:08:00 +0000

The Feline Advisory Bureau is a charity dedicated to promoting the health and welfare of cats. This year is their 50th anniversary and among the celebrations FAB are launching a new book Essential Cattitude: an insight into the feline world.

In December 2006 FAB joined forces with top behaviourists in the UK to form the FAB Feline Behaviour Expert Panel to combine their expertise and work on the behaviour issues facing cats in our modern world. This new book is a result of their work and aims to help owners understand their cats and the stresses they might be under. To illustrate the book FAB asked cat loving artists and celebrities to contribute pictures of their favourite felines and several members of SOFA were among those who donated a piece of artwork to FAB.

Claire Bessant

FAB held the book launch at the Groucho club in SOHO, London. Many of the books contributors were there including several of our members. After an introduction by Claire Bessant there were excellent short talks by Peter Neville and Vicky Hall about feline evolution and behaviour, the authors will be familiar to cat to cat owners I'm sure. And Lynsey De Paul told the lovely story of Saffy, her beautiful Siamese cat.

Peter Neville

The book launch was a wonderful way to start FAB's 50th year. Fab also have a beautiful new rose variety named in their honour - The FAB at 50 rose and it appears on the front cover of Essential Cattitude.

You can find out much more about Essential Cattitude: an insight into the feline world and even buy a copy on FAB's web site www.fabcats.org.

The non SOFA contributors include Elizabeth Emanuel, Lynsey de Paul, Sir Roy Strong, Steve Leonard, Celia Haddon, Maureen Lipman, Alexander McCall Smith, James May, Dermot Murnaghan, Miriam Margolyes and Jane Burton.

The artists

The SOFA contributors include Paul Dyson, Marian Forster, Jacqueline Gaylard, Alex Johnson, Denise Laurent, Janet Pidoux, Celia Pike and Lois Sykes.

Click here to see the large photo of the artists group.

The Society Of Feline Artists London Exibition Private View 2007

The Editor — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 14:14:00 +0100

The eleventh annual Exhibition for The Society of Feline Artists is now on at the Llewellyn Alexander Gallery in London and it features the work of Full and Associate members of SOFA. On show are approximately 300 paintings of cats in oil, acrylic, watercolour, pastel and etchings - making it the largest exhibition of cat art in the country.

Today our London exhibition opened it's doors for the private view. It was surprisingly well attended considering we were blessed with a tube strike and traffic chaos. But everyone enjoyed the afternoon, the champagne and the chance to see so much high quality work on display. The show was opened in splendid style by our Patron David Grant.

Kay Young gave the welcoming speech and thanked Jillian and Ernest and the staff at Llewellyn Alexander for their hard work on our behalf.

The gallery prize was won this year by Denise Laurent for her painting 'Lick Me!'

The painting chosend for the Friends Prize Draw this year was 'Dreaming Cat' a painting by Sue Sareen.

There are lots of photos in the Exhibitions SOFA2007 gallery of the private view. I couldn't photograph all the paintings as I couldn't get to a couple of the areas where paintings were hanging so apologies to those I've missed, and there are a lot of reflection too, especially those paintings hanging in the windows, but hopefully it will give those members who couldn't attend an idea of how it all looks. The photos are quite large so you can get a better idea of all the paintings on the wall. Just click a photo to see the larger version.
Enjoy!

SOFA 2007

The Editor — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 12:39:00 +0100

It's that time of year again. This is the invite for the 2007 Society Of Feline Artists show at the Llewellyn Alexander Gallery in London. It runs for three weeks from the 4th of September. See you there.