Hollington’s Florilegium

Hollington’s Florilegium, paintings by David Hollington, a botanical alphabet, part 2: N to Z, in the window of the Rowley Gallery through January and February. They are accompanied by a selection of David’s miniature paintings, and a few words of introduction here below.   Continue reading “Hollington’s Florilegium”

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The Minchenden Oak

I’ve still not been getting out much but on New Year’s Day I managed to get 5 miles from home to visit the Minchenden Oak. I didn’t get such a great welcome, but thankfully I was not denied access. It looked like it was meant to be closed, but its makeshift gate was on the ground when I arrived. This is the only entrance to the Minchenden Oak Garden, a small walled garden created in 1934 to safeguard the ancient Minchenden Oak. Continue reading “The Minchenden Oak”

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Flowers From A London Garden

There’s a new exhibition in The Rowley Gallery window – eighteen freshly picked watercolours from Fanny Shorter’s garden. She dressed the window with her Mill Oak fabric and Margo wallpaper and arranged her flowers in what is now The Rowley Gallery garden. And she also wrote a blogpost… Continue reading “Flowers From A London Garden”

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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”

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Hollington’s Florilegium

Hollington’s Florilegium, paintings by David Hollington, a botanical alphabet, part 1: A to M, in the window of the Rowley Gallery throughout October. They are accompanied by a selection of David’s miniature paintings, and a few words of introduction here below.   Continue reading “Hollington’s Florilegium”

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A Jaunt To See Jenner

Yesterday, in need of exercise on a bright Spring day, I walked down to the Italian Gardens at the north side of Kensington Gardens. I made sure that I was socially distancing all the way. Though this was relatively easy. Not many people about. Continue reading “A Jaunt To See Jenner”

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Spring Paintings

For March we’ve got a wonderful new window display of paintings by Debbie George, a garden of spring flowers to enliven these grey, wet days. We’re hoping they’ll work their magic and inspire the sun to shine again, and transform our winter weary street with a carnival of colourful new life. Continue reading “Spring Paintings”

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Delicious Solitude

This little booklet is no bigger than a postcard. It’s a pocket book. It was published in 1989 for a joint exhibition of drawings by John Hubbard and photographs by Paul Joyce at the Royal Festival Hall. The exhibition toured to other venues, including Warwick Arts Centre. I didn’t see the exhibition but fortunately I found this book, another discovery in the treasure house that was Notting Hill Books. For many years its tiny reproductions were my only knowledge of John Hubbard’s charcoal drawings, until I saw his exhibition at Kew Gardens in 2006, Spirit of Trees, which included some of the drawings reproduced here. I found this book again today and felt moved to share its pages. Continue reading “Delicious Solitude”

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The Colour Of Memory

The entrance to the Pierre Bonnard exhibition at Tate Modern is a portal through a giant detail reproduction taken from his painting The Garden of 1936. It’s perhaps his best painting. It’s the one that most draws me in, most like a garden itself with it’s abstract disposition of marks and colours, it reminds me of paintings by Patrick Heron and Gillian Ayres. And there are other paintings here that bring to mind Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Howard Hodgkin, David Hockney. But before all of that, we’re straightaway into a red gallery with ‘hot’ paintings of Bonnard’s mistress, full-frontal nudes and a post-coital bedroom scene. The gardening comes later. Continue reading “The Colour Of Memory”

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Refuge – The Stone Garden At Weston

‘Refuge – The Stone Garden at Weston’ by Clare Dearnaley is a 20 minute film about the art collector Ronnie Duncan’s love for stone and his philosophy on life and of ‘living through his eyes’. Shot over one year it is led by capturing light passing across the stones, which appears to animate them and by an absorbing conversation with Ronnie. The film gently examines stories; the creation of an environment, the nature of possessions and the reclaiming and reusing of materials. It seeks to capture the possible transience of the Stone Garden as much as the semi-permanence of the stones themselves.

Weston is a 17th century cottage in Otley, North Yorkshire, home to Ronnie Duncan, who has over the last 60 years quietly furnished it with a remarkable collection of paintings and sculptures. This film looks at the stones in the garden; for more on the contents of the house please see the earlier blogpost – More Love Than Money.

There is also a lovely book by Polly Feversham and Diane Howse – Weston, a necessary dream.

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