Rowley Gallery Blog
One day a man from over the hills came into the shop to buy a greetings card. He was a graceless man of few words though he did say the card was for his sick mother, but the words seemed to stumble over his tongue as he spoke. He was a large, lumbering, oaf of a man yet he was very quick to choose a card, and he paid for it with a crisp, new £50 note. Continue reading “Metamorphosis”
A nice bundle of clean, new leaves of walnut burr veneer fresh from the tree. Continue reading “A Bundle Of Walnut”
Marc the electrician came to see us, to fix the lighting and to bring us these delicious eggs from his garden in Thornton Heath where he keeps Cotswold Legbars, French Copper Neck Marans, a large speckled hen and a black tailed Colombian. Continue reading “Chick, Chick, Chick, Chick, Chicken”
Three big new paintings by Jelly Green go on show at Kensington Place from Tuesday 7th August. Their large north wall has inspired Jelly to stretch out and paint on a much larger scale than before.
The cows in this new series of paintings graze on the water meadows in the Alde Valley. One of the lovely things about this particular herd is that unusually they are a mixture of breeds from Simmentals to Belgian Blues and Charolais, which provides a much wider palette of colours and forms. These three paintings are my largest pieces yet. There is something really intimidating and challenging about working on this scale: the potential for failure is magnified, the empty space to fill completely daunting. But when they work, it’s a huge relief and a painting that is hard to ignore.
This is another from the Guardian’s Eyewitness series, and it’s also another in a developing Frames of Reference series. This is Cwm Idwal, a valley in Snowdonia, and a word which seems to keep recurring, either as cwm or combe or comb. See earlier posts Down & Round & Up & Over and Wind Comb and Combe Again. This time it’s a photograph which won the National Parks Landscape Photograph Competition by Michal Tekel and it’s what you might call sublime.
Christopher Corr has been teaching this summer at West Dean which involved taking students on excursions and field trips to local beaches such as Littlehampton, Selsey, West Wittering and Worthing, where the weather was variable (not tropical) but typical of British Summer Time.
After listening to his records for the past 45 years, I finally got to see Taj Mahal play live last week at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. I don’t know what took me so long but it was worth the wait. He’s just so full of music. One moment you could swear you’re listening to Howling Wolf, then Mississippi John Hurt and even at times Otis Redding. He’s a voice of resurrection. He gave us rocking bar-room electric blues and gently swaying acoustic country blues with touches of scat singing, reggae, calypso, Celtic flavoured banjo picking and a beautiful surprise duet with Baaba Maal. And also Fishing Blues.
Here’s Kai running the Plymouth Hoe 10 last year. A ten mile run around Plymouth Hoe, the highlight being this jaunty jig as she came by where her niece Molly was waiting to cheer her on. Kai will be running the British 10K London Run on Sunday 8th July and she’s promised a little hornpipe as she crosses the finishing line. See her page on the JustGiving website here.
This just in from Philip Maltman: Modern Day Greek Warrior for the Greek People.
This marquetry panel was designed by William Arthur Chase and made by The Rowley Gallery, circa 1920. It looks like the wood inlay is pine, sycamore, perhaps cedar, and oak-burr for the hair. It is titled Dancer With Cymbals and by its size and the way it is framed you’d be forgiven for thinking it might actually be a tambourine. It was recently discovered at auction and very kindly returned to its maker courtesy of the good folks at JHW Fine Art. Thank you, James.