Green, Yellow & Grey With Pink & Cream

David Stubbs has a small oil painting in this year’s Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. It is titled Green, Yellow & Grey with Pink & Cream (Dutch Pots III) and it sold almost straightaway, though others are available at The Rowley Gallery. David’s painting has been reproduced as an RA card.

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Kensington Palace

Our neighbours down the road at Kensington Palace just had a makeover. They recently reopened their doors to visitors after months of redecorating. The entrance hall is entrancing. It features a luminous lace light sculpture adorned with Swarovski crystals, in homage to the Royal Dress Collection. It’s tree-like structure appears to be related to the new concourse canopy at King’s Cross. Trees and branches also make an appearance in other rooms. Look out for the bottle-tree and the dolls tree-houses. Here below are more photographs from the palace. Continue reading “Kensington Palace”

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It’s Complicated

Jazmin Velasco is fascinated by all the paraphernalia of printmaking, particularly vintage presses and letterpress printing blocks. Her studio is full of all kinds of mechanical devices for producing multiple images and she loves to mix up the various techniques. Few of her prints are ever straightforward but all are witty and playful. This one’s called It’s Complicated. Continue reading “It’s Complicated”

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Hatfield Forest & Hatfield Broad Oak

This is one of my favourite trees, an ancient Hornbeam pollard at Bush End Plain, an area of wood pasture in Hatfield Forest. This place has been grazed by cattle and sheep for at least 1000 years, and these trees pollarded to keep their green shoots out of reach of grazing livestock. There are also deer here and Oliver Rackham has called this The Last Forest because it is the only surviving example of a Royal Medieval Hunting Forest, meaning forest as a place where the monarch had the right to keep deer and to kill and eat them. This maintained environment has been shaped with rides, chases and woodland by continuous managed development over the past millenium. Continue reading “Hatfield Forest & Hatfield Broad Oak”

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