Rowley Gallery Blog
Every so often Jonathan Christie brings us a few new pictures. Never too many and never too often so consequently each new arrival is always eagerly anticipated. This time he brought Ghost House, a painting of a stone cottage so thickly covered with whitewash it appeared to glow in the dark. It also happens to be on Strumble Head, like Paul Finn’s earlier lithograph. Continue reading “Artists’ Voices”
Lithography is a bit different from other print processes. Although I am interested in printmaking despite being a painter, I am no expert. Linocuts and woodblocks depend on the image being raised, and etching depends on the image being recessed. Lithography happens on a flat surface like a lithographic stone or zinc plate and depends on the antipathy between grease and water. The way a mark is made on a stone or a plate is the same as in a drawing or painting, you don’t need an etching needle or engraving tool. The mark is made with a greasy crayon or ink, and then the print is created on a press where alternate use of dampening the plate or stone with water and then applying ink, which attaches only to the greasy drawing, allows the image to be printed. Continue reading “Strumble Head”
We’re making an example of Jonathan Gibbs. The Rowley Gallery don’t do one person exhibitions, but since he just sent us an irresistible selection of paintings, and because he was the first artist we turned to when we began to exhibit pictures, we are doing the next best thing to a one person show and we’re making a featured display of his work. Please join us for the private view on June 11th from 6.30pm at The Rowley Gallery, 115 Kensington Church Street, London, W8 7LN. Continue reading “Jonathan Gibbs @ The Rowley Gallery”
This walk begins where In Epping Forest ended. Butlers Retreat turned out to be the perfect place for breakfast, with possibly the best coffee in Essex. It kick started our trip up to Saffron Walden. Along the way we passed huge fields of cultivated rapeseed and roadside banks of wild cowslips, a yellow landscape that was once purple with crocus grown for their precious saffron. Continue reading “From Saffron Walden”
The title of the exhibition derives from an article by the artist in A Tonic to the Nation, The Festival of Britain (ed. Banham & Hillier), “I think that the Festival had a real and lasting effect on private life in Britain. Clothes, streets, houses and thousands of things in daily use have slowly got brighter and lighter ever since, and this change can be traced directly back.” Continue reading “Brighter & Lighter”
Aaron Kasmin is showing his rarely seen chalk pencil drawings in an exhibition at the Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery from 5th – 29th June. Closely Observed features small scale still life studies of everyday objects. The private view is on Wednesday 5th June from 6.30 – 8.30. More details here.
These are the Fish & Coal Buildings on the Regent’s Canal at King’s Cross. Often when I pass there’s a cormorant sitting on the chimney. Now it looks like they’ve been ticked by Nike. Over the last few weeks these silver shapes have slowly spread over the surrounding walls and roofs so that now they seem to stretch from Camley Street right round to York Way. Continue reading “Across The Buildings”
Dominic has recently been turning up for work a little the worse for wear, bearing the scars of his daily encounters with rogue cyclists. It seems a cavern has been found beneath Notting Hill Gate where this prophetic cave painting was discovered. Thames Water have closed the road whilst they carry out investigations but frustrated cyclists continue their journeys on the pavement. Continue reading “Besieged By Cyclists”
Werner Herzog was granted exclusive access to the Chauvet Cave in the Ardèche Gorge in southern France. The caves are not normally open to the public. They were discovered in 1994 and found to contain the earliest known paleolithic cave paintings, now estimated to be 30,000 years old. Herzog made a beautiful and moving film, illuminating the paintings hidden so long in the dark. Continue reading “Cave Of Forgotten Dreams”
What first strikes you about these Ice Age objects, suspended on transparent plastic stands in glass cases amidst crowds of 21st-century humans, is that they are absolutely tiny. The largest works are approximately the span of a man’s hand, the smallest the size of a child’s fingernail. For a big show it’s an intimate experience. There’s a lot of squeezing about, bending down and peering in, the peculiar sensation of having to adjust your perception to match their scale, as if squeezing yourself down through the same narrow aperture that leads to the wonders of Chauvet and Lascaux. What you’re experiencing is time travel. You adjust yourself to the conditions, and when you become accustomed to what you see, it’s as if you’re looking back to your own time through the wrong end of a telescope, the one that makes everything far away but pin-sharp. Continue reading “The Vision Thing”