Rowley Gallery Blog
Greg Becker has been documenting the triumphs and trials of a vegetable gardener by keeping a visual record, now collected into one book of educational, meditational and inspirational drawings.
Greg’s book requires Adobe Flash Player. Apologies to iPad & iPhone users, but you can see it here.
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”
There is something addictive about the Dorset coastline, I just can’t get enough. It always surprises me with its twists and turns and steep promontories. Continue reading “To Old Harry”
Christopher Corr has very kindly donated this portrait of Jolly Jack Tar to Kai at The Rowley Gallery, to be raffled in aid of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. Kai spends a lot of time sailing on the Thames at the Westminster Boating Base, which is why she has chosen to support the RNLI. Raffle tickets are £1 each, available from The Rowley Gallery, and the winning ticket will be drawn on Friday 14th September.
Kai is also spending the summer of 2012 running and cycling across London in three major charity fundraising events. Please support her craziness by looking at her JustGiving page here.
At home we just had builders and decorators in the house. They tore down ceilings and knocked down walls. We were reduced to a couple of rooms for a while and to escape the dust and the mayhem I discovered desert islands in the peeled wallpaper. Continue reading “Atlas Of Remote Islands”
The weekend before last we went up to Suffolk to visit the Alde Valley Spring Festival. It’s at White House Farm in Great Glemham where barns and out-buildings are used to display local crafts and artworks. Appropriately Jelly Green‘s lively paintings occupied the former cowshed. Continue reading “Alde Valley Spring Festival”
Last month my daughter gave me this book of magical trees for my birthday. It’s a collection of hand-pulled screenprints on black paper, bound by hand into a gorgeous book where, according to John Berger, “the nightingale sings until morning”. Continue reading “The Night Life Of Trees”
We recently framed these two images by Pia Gazzola. Above is a digital photograph of bamboo leaves dipped in ink, moved by the wind to draw on the sheet of paper placed beneath them. Below is the drawing they produced. They are from a series of artworks where trees are encouraged to make drawings. Bamboo, strictly speaking is a grass rather than a tree, but with a history of service in providing drawing implements. See more here.
This naked painting, looking a little ragged around the edges, was brought to us for framing. It is by Anna Marinova, an oil on canvas titled Model With Mirror. Continue reading “Getting Dressed”
How many times have I gone into a good gallery and seen badly presented work? Very rarely, because believe it or not, gallery owners and buyers really care about that stuff. Unfortunately I know a fair few artists who don’t. They create wonderful work but then their frames are falling apart, the mounts aren’t cut straight or the print margins are ink-smudged. Continue reading “Because Your Work Is Worth It?”
