Rowley Gallery Blog
Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée
MuCEM was opened in 2013 as part of the Marseille Capital of European Culture celebrations. The museum is dedicated completely and totally to the Mediterranean, to its history, civilisations and its culture. It’s all about the life that has developed out of the Mediterranean from its earliest histories to the tensions and conflicts of our own time. Continue reading “MuCEM”
As a birthday treat Sue took me for a walk on the Dengie Peninsula on the far eastern shore of Essex. She had her eyes on the horizon. We arrived via Burnham-on-Crouch, a pretty Georgian estuary town but with the saddest fish & chips and a clown to scare the children. His car was parked next to ours. We made our escape towards Southminster, but we got ensnared by the Burnham Loop where we revolved time and again around the endless fenlands (afeared lest we contract Dengie Fever from the mosquito-infested swamps) until finally we saw the error of our ways (a misplaced signpost) and we were at last expelled to Tillingham and ultimately onwards to Bradwell-on-Sea. Continue reading “To The Horizon”
Hambledon Hill
Out of the Wood is an exhibition of wood engravings by Howard Phipps at The Art Stable, Child Okeford, Dorset from 16 April until 7 May 2016. The gallery is situated in the courtyard of Gold Hill Organic Farm, next to the farm shop, and looks out towards the iron age hill fort of Hambledon Hill.
The Arborealists will stage their third exhibition at St Barbe Museum and Art gallery, Lymington, 23rd April – 4th June 2016, featuring new works by 35 artists. Each will show just one work to emphasise the diversity of art practice prevalent within the group – in terms of size, medium, style and philosophy. Continue reading “The Arborealists”
I’m fascinated by the structural qualities of leaves. The veins convey the lifeblood to the leaf and often echo the physical structure of the tree – trunk, branches, twigs – in miniature. These fractal-like qualities inspired me to paint trees on dried leaves, which were collected last autumn. Some were pressed, while others were left to dry in their natural shape. Continue reading “Trees On Leaves”
The Alde Valley Spring Festival 2016
A four week celebration of food, farming, landscape & the arts
Saturday 23rd April – Sunday 22nd May 2016
White House Farm, Great Glemham, Suffolk IP17 1LS
Festival Exhibition – Open 10am-6pm, Tues – Fri, Sat & Sun + Bank Holidays
Stuart Anderson, Melanie Comber, Daisy Cook, Marchela Dimitrova, Peter Dibble, Laurence Edwards, Alice-Andrea Ewing, Richard Elliott, Meriel Ensom, George Farrow-Hawkins, Tobias Ford, Jason Gathorne-Hardy, Emma Green, Jelly Green, Maggi Hambling, Roger Hardy, Mercury Hare, Craig Hudson, Nienke Jongsma, Tory Lawrence, Ffiona Lewis, Otis Luxton, Caroline MacAdam Clark, Freddy Morris, Becky Munting, Tessa Newcomb, Sarah Pirkis, Ruth Stage, Leszek Zielinski.
※
The watercolour illustrated above is Leaves in an English Wood (151 x 29 cm) by Jelly Green.
I was born just after WW2. My parents had moved to Noke when they married in the early 1940s. We lived in a tiny cottage totally lacking modern amenities. No electricity, water from the well and an earth loo in ‘The Elm Barn’, a shed with a grand name, all set in a third of an acre of orchard. An artist’s retreat from the hurly burly of war torn London. This was my world – apple trees to climb, a stream to splash in, a duck pond beyond the gate where my brother and I launched catamaran boats whittled from elder sticks. The village was a place apart – a road petering out on the edge of the moor, smelling of cows and cow parsley, deep ditches fringed by pollard willows and a huge sky. This is the place my life started. Continue reading “Otmoor: Moonlight & Myths”
A roadside coffee stop en route to San Gimignano. They serve the best espresso macchiato I’ve ever tasted. Immediately refreshed and we’re watching out for our destination’s distinctive towers, checking the horizon for their silhouettes, easily confused by the outlines of countless cypress trees. Continue reading “San Gimignano”
The Goosewoman & Old Bright, The Postman; c.1840. Private Collection
After 18 months of researching, writing, photographing and designing, my book George Smart, the Tailor of Frant: Artist in Cloth & Velvet Figures has finally been published. I first encountered George Smart’s pictures when I was a student at Maidstone College of Art over 25 years ago. I came across a few thumbnails of his work in a book by James Ayres and, despite being poorly printed, they jumped off the page at me and lodged themselves in my mind. Continue reading “George Smart”
It’s almost 30 years since John Hubbard visited New Harmony, a small town in Indiana, USA, established in 1825 as a model community by the Welsh utopian thinker and social reformer Robert Owen. John was invited by Jane Blaffer Owen, New Harmony resident and the wife of Robert Owen’s third great grandson. Continue reading “From The Poet’s House”