Rowley Gallery Blog
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”
We came to Filitosa by a circuitous route from Propriano via Sollacaro, a handsome old village perché of granite houses that almost seem to have sprouted organically from the terraced mountainside. As we descended into the Taravo valley we passed what appeared to be pumpkins hanging from the olive trees. I stopped the car and we got out for a closer look. We discovered bundles of cheesecloth tied to the branches. Perhaps it was a local cheese, a speciality of Sollacaro maturing in the olive groves? Continue reading “Filitosa”
The Ghost Cat Phantom Revue (to give the full title) is an annual Darktown cabaret, part of the Cadaver Clamjamphrie, held at the Starlight Hotel, every halloween. The revue have also been known to perform around St. Within’s Day too.
The Cat People, Domino & Rufus, inspired by the great Jacques Tourneur film, will appear on stage and tell polite jokes, which the audience may or may not find amusing. Continue reading “The Phantom Revue”
The plateau of Cauria, 15 kilometres south of Sartène and 2 kilometres from the coast, is home to three historic sites emblematic of Corsica: the megalithic statue-menhirs of I Stantari and Renaghju, and the dolmen of Funtanaccia.
For the origin of sculpture, these monumental figures are as important as the cave drawings of Lascaux and Altamira are for the origin of painting. When you look at one, you know it represents someone — someone to whom you could give a name. Continue reading “Cauria”