Rowley Gallery Blog
This little oil painting, titled Passing By and roughly the size of a small paperback, is one of sixteen that Robert Newton was commissioned to paint at the end of last year. We’ve just finished framing them. They’re set in simple white trays to protect and contain their overflowing edges and, so that they don’t disappear without trace, they’re saved here in Frames Of Reference. Continue reading “16 Newtons”
Piazza Vecchia, the Venetian styled centrepiece of Bergamo’s upper town, the medieval Città Alta, high on the hill overlooking the modern city of Bergamo on the plain below. Judging by the cars I’d guess this postcard dates from the 1960s, but there were no cars parked here when we visited last summer. The square was pedestrianised for the flocks of summer tourists. Continue reading “Bergamo Alta”
I’m not going to pretend a partridge in a pear tree is the most original of Christmas card ideas but I had been drawing a lot of birds and a lot of fruit and it did fit the brief rather nicely so I didn’t drift too far for inspiration. Continue reading “A Partridge In A Pear Tree”
Eggardon Hill in west Dorset, 5 miles east of Bridport, overlooking the Marshwood Vale to the west. The Fort is Iron Age and is at the end of a long, little used, Roman road from Dorchester. On a clear day you can see from the Devon coast to the Purbecks in the east. Continue reading “The Drop”
Iceland has been waiting for me in my dreams, all the cliches of a land being formed of fire and ice seem inescapable when your feet are upon lava flows and glaciers. The climate and weather patterns change in minutes. Mine and my friend Tom’s journey began after a long drive to the far south east of the island hear a town called Höfn. Continue reading “Land Of Ice”
It was a fleeting visit. Rain was falling on Lake Como so we got the train to Milan, but there was no plan. We arrived at Stazione Nord and walked into town just to see what we might find. Continue reading “In Milano”
A walk around the narrow streets of the città murata, Como’s walled old quarter, a dense network of narrow, pedestrianised lanes at the centre of the city. An aimless wander through the maze of streets and some random photographs for souvenirs, mementos, frames of reference. Continue reading “In Como”
I discovered this film thanks to Caught By The River and Nowness. A brief evocation of Prospect Cottage and its endless garden by Howard Sooley, photographer of Derek Jarman’s Garden.
Busie old foole, unruly Sunne,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windowes, and through curtains call on us?
Must to thy motion lovers’ seasons run?
Sawcy pedantique wretch, goe chide
Late schoole boyes and sowre prentices,
Goe tell Court-huntsmen, that the King will ride,
Call countrey ants to harvest offices;
Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clyme,
Nor houres, dayes, moneths, which are the rags of time…
Thou sunne art halfe as happy as wee,
In that the world’s contracted thus.
Thine age askes ease, and since thy duties bee
To warme the world, that’s done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed thy centre is, these walls thy spheare.
from The Sunne Rising by John Donne, 1633.
I recently discovered this lovely film via a recommendation from Kettle’s Yard. It’s a visit to the home of Ronnie Duncan and his art collection at Weston in Otley near Leeds.
The art at Weston – which includes works by the likes of Roger Hilton, Alan Davie, Trevor Bell and Terry Frost – ‘lives’ there with Ronnie, it is not simply exhibited. Unlike Kettle’s Yard, however, Weston is unlikely to be preserved; the works within will one day be dispersed: donated to public collections across the country, and the cottage will return to the possession of its owner. A generous and sociable man, Ronnie frequently welcomes visitors to Weston to experience the collection first-hand. He asked me to make this film in order that this may continue, in some small way, even when the works are being appreciated anew in smart galleries on freshly painted walls – Jared Schiller.
