Rowley Gallery Blog
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”
Once a term Holland Park School ask us to frame the cover of their school magazine. Most recently it featured a photo of Antony Gormley to mark the arrival of a specially commissioned sculpture on the school roof. This was a great surprise, and a nice coincidence, just as I was drafting the previous post about his exhibition last year in Florence. Continue reading “Connect”
Palazzo Pitti & Forte Belvedere, one of a series of paintings of Medici villas by the Flemish artist Giusto Utens from 1599. The fort was built nine years earlier, on the highest hill of the Boboli Gardens to protect and watch over and keep an eagle-eye on the city of Florence down below. Continue reading “Forte Di Belvedere”
One visit to Florence was not enough, we had to come back for a second round. A third and a fourth would have been good, this place is inexhaustible, but sadly we didn’t have time so we needed to be selective. Top of the list was the Uffizi but not until we’d had an extremely indulgent breakfast at Rivoire in Piazza della Signoria, a great place to watch our fellow tourists. Continue reading “Another Look At Florence”
Beatrice Forshall working on a picture of an albatross surrounded by plastic debris she’s collected from the beach; a salutary warning against the the proliferation of throwaway plastic in our modern-day world. It’s an image made in response to Midway: A Message From The Gyre, a film that shows the toxic consequences of too much discarded plastic in the seas. Continue reading “Albatross”
I’d read of a huge tree, a monumental cedar of Lebanon, that grows just outside the walls of the town of Barga in northern Italy. It was born in 1814 and transplanted here in 1836 where it became adopted as a symbol of Giovine Italia (Young Italy) and Italian unification. Continue reading “Barga & Beyond”
Palazzo Dona
In Venice I revisit views that I have drawn or painted before and feel more free to take liberties with, like Palazzo Dona in Campo S. Maria Formosa or the big palaces across from San Vio near Accademia. But there is nothing quite like a first ‘go’ at a newly discovered subject – last summer it was a view across the Grand Canal from Calle Giustinian, discovered near a sumptuous Sean Scully exhibition, and the little Oratorio in Campo Sant Angelo which I must have by-passed countless times but which I suddenly saw in a new light as I made my hot way home for lunch.
What a seductress – La Serenissima – I just can’t stay away! Continue reading “In Venice”
This was another camera-shy exhibition. We had to switch off our cameras at the entrance, even though it was full of exhibitionist ‘performing sculptures’, all of them posing and pouting and teasing. Mostly they’re mobiles though none of them moved, their motion implied through poise and balance. Yet despite these contradictions, it’s a fantastic show, elegant and vibrant and fun. Continue reading “Performing Sculpture”