Rowley Gallery Blog
David Rees Davies brought us a few of his joyful paintings of birds. These are the first arrivals and hopefully more will follow soon, maybe a spring migration. He sent some words too. Continue reading “Conference Of The Birds”
July just before the Olympics I sat on Faringdon Folly Hill. Bright sun. Clear colour. White Horse Hill in the distance. From the west a ripple of coloured bands. Wavering smoke rainbow. Drawn through the Vale of the White Horse by a squadron of the Red Arrows as they practiced for the Olympics. Paul Nash battle of Britain paintings enacted just for me. Continue reading “Folly Hill Return”
Samuel Beckett rehearsing Endgame and ‘having an idea’ with the San Quentin Drama Workshop at Riverside Studios in Hammersmith in 1980. I worked there intermittently in those days, even had a small exhibition of my paintings there, and the house photographer Chris Harris, knowing how much I loved Beckett, gave me a print of this photograph for my birthday. Continue reading “Beckett At Sixty”
Five years after its first performance I finally got to see Sutra last week at Sadler’s Wells. It was worth waiting for. It’s an intense, concentrated burst of energy. 20 Kung-Fu monks behaving like curious cats in an exuberent exploration of the ins and outs of boxes. It opens with a ‘choreographer’ (down right) describing a moving line by hand over miniature boxes whilst a monk (centre stage) dances the same line over full size boxes. This duality continues throughout the performance, playing with ideas of thought/action, self/other, inner/outer, micro/macro… Continue reading “Sutra”
Susie Freeman’s Compass exhibition opened last week. This is her piece Bacteriology Illustrated in the window of Art@42 late on Saturday night. It features Susie’s signature machine-knitted pocket fabric formed into a dress. The pockets contain fragments torn from the pages of the book. Continue reading “Compass Update”
Christopher Corr painted this picture to celebrate the opening of the Shard, London’s newest, tallest building. For the past few years we’ve watched it grow from viewpoints all around the city. The inexorable rise of this arrogant and aggressive spike was impossible to ignore. Now it’s here it has quickly become another iconic landmark on the London skyline. A spire with a view – click to ascend and there’s a great view of it from the river here.
This is another book from the collection of Evelyn Hallewell. It was published in 1940 as a paperback unlike most King Penguins which were usually hardbacks. It contains examples of Penguin’s earliest attempts at colour printing. Continue reading “Portraits Of Christ”
This is a detail of Compass, a giclée print by Susie Freeman from 2012 and the inspiration and title for an exhibition of her recent work at Art@42 from 28th March. Continue reading “Compass”
Hojas de Papel / Falling Leaves / Installation / Handmade Paper Piece. I wasn’t sure about the title so I’ve just put it all. As a papermaker I often look at the leaves and flowers of a plant and wonder how they will react in the papermaking process in terms of texture, colour and fibres. Continue reading “Falling Leaves”
Most of my working life has been combining making paintings and prints and teaching, some of the time in Art Colleges, but mostly as a schoolteacher. A while back I read David Wiseman’s lovely post, Garden Studio. When I finished full time teaching last summer, I decided to have a posh shed built, which would enable me to work at the end of my garden in suburban London. Continue reading “The Posh Painting Shed”