Rowley Gallery Blog
In February 1990, I took a plane from the beautiful and vibrant crazy beach city of Rio de Janeiro via Sao Paulo to the futuristic capital city Brasilia. Located in the savannah, centrally placed in the country, the shape of the new city is designed to look like an aeroplane. It was laid out by Lucio Costa, the father of modern Brazilian architecture who in turn chose Oscar Niemeyer to realise the poetry and optimism of the new Brazil. Continue reading “For Oscar Niemeyer”
Lottie said, ‘I don’t know why you’re wasting your time photographing autumn leaves, the story of Toledo is in its walls’. So, never one to ignore an idea for a blog post, and because there are few trees in Toledo, I began collecting images of the casco murallas. Continue reading “The Walls Of Toledo”
Last Sunday I went back to St Pancras Old Church for the first time since April (A Walk From King’s Cross) to see how the Hardy Tree was getting on. It is not a particularly grand tree, nor is it ancient but it is probably London’s most significant ash tree. With all the hysteria in the press I wondered if I would find signs here of ash dieback. Is this tree able to withstand the coming plague or is it doomed and this site to become a memorial to fraxinus excelsior? Continue reading “Hardy Ash?”
Just a few notes and pictures after a wonderful trip to St Ives. I was down to exhibit again with the National Acrylic Painters Association who were showing in the famous Crypt Gallery which in the 1940s was the venue of exhibitions by the Crypt group when St Ives was at the cutting edge of British painting and sculpture. Continue reading “Notes From St Ives”
The four landscape paintings on exhibition at The Rowley Gallery were committed to 200gsm acid-free paper using artist’s watercolours and gouache from the peaks of Eggardon Hill and Pilsdon Pen in north west Dorset. Pilsdon is Dorset’s highest hill, and closely associated with the legend of the screaming skull at Bettiscombe Manor, down there in the Marshwood Vale. For many years the skull in question was believed to be that of an African servant girl of the 18th century. Under recent analysis it was proved to be the skull of a young girl of the late Neolithic, circa 4,000 BC. This is close to the vintage of the ancient shaped hills and sacred landscapes of Dorset – stone circles, burrows, tumps, burial sites, excarnation sites, and later fashioned as fortresses raised against the worsening weather and tribal pomp of the Iron Age. All are studded with human, animal and ritual remains in their steep, deeply dug chalk banks. Continue reading “From Eggardon Hill & Pilsdon Pen”
A circuit of Ambresbury Banks in Epping Forest, an ancient earthwork built circa 500BC. According to local legend it was the site of the defeat and death of the great British Queen Boudicca at the hands of the Romans in AD61. The Iron Age banks and ditches formed an enclosure used as a cattle fold. Nowadays it is overgrown with beech trees and was covered with a carpet of leaves and beechmast when we visited. A series of lovely undulations striped by tree shadows in leaf filtered light. Continue reading “Ambresbury Banks”
Autumn leaves in the Jardin de Principe in Aranjuez, Spain. We were driving from Madrid to Toledo and stopped here for lunch and a walk in the park. This garden and the adjacent Jardin de la Isla were laid out around the royal palace of Philip II in the 16th century, 200 years before the present town was built. They became the inspiration in 1939 for the Concierto de Aranjuez by Joaquín Rodrigo. Continue reading “Hojas De Otoño”
A walk on Hampstead Heath and the amazement of finding myself suddenly in the middle of another autumn produced the new series of prints. Actually it is not a new series. The new prints became part of the Regency series. After all these years I still find surprising the way prints create themselves almost without my help. Continue reading “Keats Leaves”
I love this picture. It reminds me of a ‘fayr feeld ful of folk’ from Piers Plowman. Christopher Corr made it for a client from London now living in Washington. The brief was to paint the view from Parliament Hill with all London’s landmark buildings plus Gospel Oak lido and running track. He cleverly reversed the viewpoint so we’re looking back down on this earthly paradise. Click on the image to enlarge it and explore it in detail. The painting measures 106 x 74 cms. Continue reading “Corr Blimey!”
During the last few years I have become increasingly interested in certain distinctive downland hills such as Melbury Beacon, and hill forts such as Hambledon Hill and Winkelbury Hillfort. These either in Dorset or Wiltshire where the short turf on the chalk helps in defining their underlying structure, and where these hills often rise quite steeply from their surrounding valleys. I am also interested in the way artists often get involved with a subject over time, as I frequently return to a theme again and again. Witness Paul Nash for instance and his preoccupation with the two hills at Wittenham Clumps. Continue reading “Eggardon”