We’ve a windowful of wood engravings and linocuts from Howard Phipps. They’re all in black & white but get in close and see the detail and they’re as colourful as you could wish for. Continue reading “A March Window”
A March Window
Category: Art
Dervish Dance
Club d’Elf: Dervish Dance (traditional Sufi, arr. by Mike Rivard)
Sand animation by Kseniya Simonova
Musicians:
Brahim Fribgane: oud, hand drum
John Medeski: keyboards
David Fiuczynski: guitars
Mister Rourke: turntables
Mike Rivard: double bass, tamboura
Dean Johnston: drums
Whirling
We received a flying visit from a group of whirling dervishes. They came and went in a flurry and a spin and were gone almost as soon as they arrived. Continue reading “Whirling”
Japanese Joinery In Practice
Eight pages from the December 2021 edition of Fine Woodworking. Continue reading “Japanese Joinery In Practice”
A February Window
A mixed up mishmash of pictures, but connected by a shared interest in grids of one kind or another. I cast about, wondering what to include, but there’s a surprising amount in the net. I’m stealing the limelight with one of mine from years ago, so you’ll need to step in close to see over the top of it. But it’s a moveable feast. We’ll change it around, take things out, put things in, so please keep checking for updates. Continue reading “A February Window”
Twig Saints
A wall of Twig Saints at the Rowley Gallery. Hidden away off Kensington’s busy Church Street is a secluded refuge for these fragile relics. They are all boxed and beatified by Chris Kenny, each one annotated with its own story. Continue reading “Twig Saints”
Mantras & Yantras
This little book arrived just in time for Christmas. Page after page of joyful loveliness. It’s a collection of oil paintings and watercolours by Jon Groom, from December 2020 to September 2021. Colourful rhythms and rhymes to brighten our winter’s gloom. I had no choice but to take photographs and share them all here. It’s a feast for the eyes. Continue reading “Mantras & Yantras”
Cutting It Fine
Cutting It Fine: The Art of the British Wood Engraver is an exhibition at Salisbury Museum, showcasing works by twenty-one of the leading British wood engravers of the last hundred years. All the prints are on loan from a single private collection. They include Gwen Raverat, Eric Ravilious, John Nash, Paul Nash, Leon Underwood, Rachel Reckitt, Gertrude Hermes, Monica Poole, Anne Desmet and Neil Bousfield. Continue reading “Cutting It Fine”
These Paintings Are Of Themselves
I am grateful to James Kalm for giving us a private view of this Brice Marden exhibition of new work in New York. I love it. I love these beautiful, shaky, trembling, late paintings. To look at them is to unravel them, to see how they were made, and witness the hand that painted them. These paintings are of themselves, but also of everything else. They’re calligraphies written with hand-held branches, they’re a web of tree-top canopies, they’re the mycorrhizal networks in the forest floor, they’re the internet cables that connect us and separate us, that tie us together and keep us apart, they’re the vessels that run through our bodies. They’re survivors of a world that is fast disappearing, they’re reminders of why we are here. Thank you Brice.
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These paintings are of themselves
In Siracusa
Long ago and far away. 2018, in the back streets of Ortigia. Before Brexit and before Covid, when holidays were not so unusual. I’m looking back at old photos as a kind of vicarious vacation, an escape from our day to day to yesterday. We’d been here for a couple of weeks, exploring the island and the countryside round about. On this day we walked from Ortigia back into mainland Siracusa to discover the Latomia dei Cappuccini and the Catacombs of San Giovanni. Continue reading “In Siracusa”