Rowley Gallery Blog
This Tree of Life by Jazmin Velasco is a variation on the traditional Árbol de la Vida from Puebla and Metepec in her native Mexico. Rather than depicting the more usual biblical story of creation, Jazmin has chosen to illustrate her own version of the Garden of Eden, with cats and birds in harmony. Continue reading “Tree Of Life & Other Stories”
During our visit to Lincoln Cathedral we witnessed an elegant performance commemorating the 800th anniversary of the 1217 Charter of the Forest. Logs of Scots pine were transformed into wooden beams by a group of hewers in the cathedral’s Chapter House, in a spectacular ritual lasting ten days that explored the dramatic, acoustic, material and olfactory qualities of the space. Continue reading “Log Book”
The approach to Lincoln was long and flat with wide vistas of huge arable fields, along straight roads accompanied by oversized tractors, through countryside reminiscent of the industrial-scale farms of northern France. But lest we should forget where we were, on the outskirts of the city a little old lady stood on the pavement nodding involuntarily at the passing traffic, waving a St George’s Cross with the word England written across it. A radicalised ukipper standing her ground against the waves of migrant workers come to steal her crops… But then we saw the cathedral. Continue reading “In Lincoln”
A giant sand drawing by Julian Meredith on the beach at Calgary Bay on the Isle of Mull. The artist stands beside it, rake in hand. But how did he make the drawing, what guided his eye, how could he see the bigger picture? He sent me this video but no explanation. Maybe he has the gift of the Nazca.
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Some photos from our good friend Annabel Keatley in Andalusia. She was invited as a guest artist at ArtSevilla17 where last week she exhibited this installation made up of ribbons of handmade paper. Continue reading “From Air To Earth”
This is a beautiful little book of photographs taken by Kim Marsland at Charleston Farmhouse in 1981. The Bloomsbury Group had left and the Charleston Trust were yet to take over; it was a house in flux, a time capsule captured in these evocative pictures. Kim Marsland was then a student at Maidstone College of Art, which was where I’d studied until six years earlier. I’d painted the front door of our little house in red and green chevrons and furnished it with cheap second-hand furniture decorated with painted designs, and covered the walls with hand-printed wallpaper. But I’d not heard of Charleston. I think few of us had in those days. Kim Marsland’s photographs recall an intimate time before Charleston’s domestic decorations became an internationally recognised style. Continue reading “Charleston Farmhouse 1981”
The Red-Sailed Ships: Stiffkey
We recently got a nice job at The Rowley Gallery. Jonathan Christie asked us to make picture frames for a group of eight paintings he’d been invited to show with St Jude’s next month, in an exhibition called Airs, Reels & Ballads at The Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh. Continue reading “Eight Frames For Jonathan Christie”
Shepherd’s Cottage was a surprisingly elusive place for a rendezvous. I thought I knew where it was, just off the road by Staverton Thicks, the rambling old woods we’d visited a couple of times before. I knew it as Thicks Cottage, but I thought that was just another name for the same place. So when we arrived on the doorstep a bemused woodsman put us right. “The Shepherd’s Cottage is back up where you’ve just come, then left along the track. Careful though, it can be a bit sandy down at the bottom.” Continue reading “Another Walk In The Woods”
Positive Exhibit
A new window of positive paintings from John Taylor, a meditation on colour and form, a chorus of voices and the endless interplay of harmonies, a choreography of shapes and spaces. Continue reading “Positive Exhibit”
It’s time to say goodbye to Paradise, to Will Smith’s sunny holiday paintings and to Chris Kenny’s construction with found landscape paintings. But before I change the window display I just can’t resist rearranging it for one last private view. Continue reading “Anagram”