Frames of Reference

Thesis & Antithesis

This might be a curio best forgotten, an embarrassing piece of juvenilia. Forty years ago this was my final year thesis at art school. Nowadays it would be called a dissertation. But really it was just an annotated photo album. I’d found a stripey beach towel which became a sort of security blanket for a while, it seemed emblematic of the striped abstract paintings I was making and I photographed it wherever I went. I put all the photos together in a book with lots of random quotes as if I’d swallowed a library, or more likely the Whole Earth Catalog and An Index Of Possibilities. It was all very 1970s and very pretentious, but what really strikes me today is how much it resembles a prototype blog post. Continue reading “Thesis & Antithesis”

From Moore To Serra

Henry Moore’s Large Spindle Piece, a cast bronze sculpture from 1974, now installed in the newly reappointed King’s Cross Square. For the past forty years the station was hidden behind an “awful tin shed” temporary canopy. It’s eventual removal, and the long overdue revelation of Lewis Cubitt’s elegant facade, is celebrated by the arrival of this captive “flying shuttle”. Continue reading “From Moore To Serra”

Paul Finn & Huw Morgan

Paul Finn is exhibiting 10 paintings and 10 prints inspired by his visits to The Beth Chatto Gardens and Warley Place, both places featured in his A Tale Of Two Gardens. Huw Morgan is exhibiting a selection of his illustrations of birds. They can both be seen at the Well House Gallery, Oxley House, High Road, Horndon on the Hill, Stanford-le-Hope, Essex, SS17 8LF.

Cows About Town

Sussex Charolais 12

A new herd of Jelly Green’s vivacious cow paintings has just arrived. Their energy is infectious, their vitality contagious. They have a way of getting into my head and sticking in my mind. They’re the visual equivalent of earworms; they must be eyecows! Now I’m seeing cows all over town. Continue reading “Cows About Town”

Pelicans We

Dear Chris, I have just designed the new EP cover for Cosmo Sheldrake. I thought you might be interested in including it in Frames of Reference. Thank you. All the very best, Bea. Continue reading “Pelicans We”

Simon Kramer & Ernst Reijseger

Cellist Ernst Reijseger in the studio with painter Simon Kramer. One draws and the other plays, each responding to what he sees and hears. The video speaks for itself. It’s a fascinating dialogue.

Pulpit Oak

Our first walk, when we got back from Italy last year, was to another landmark oak. It was in Epping Forest but not in a part of the forest we’d visited before. We started near Queen Elizabeth’s Hunting Lodge on the far side of Chingford and headed east. Continue reading “Pulpit Oak”

Rogolone

After climbing out of Menaggio on tight switchbacks up to Croce, high on the ridge, the road scoots along the floor of the Val Menaggio, passing Bene Lario and 3km later reaching the small, reedy Lago di Piano, protected as a nature reserve and breeding place for water birds. Drop into the little information office beside the lake, or ask the Menaggio tourist office for the route description of a pleasant, almost flat two-hour walk here that takes in woodlands and a fortified cluster of medieval houses on a peninsula in the lake, known as Castel San Pietro. Continue reading “Rogolone”

A Valentine Tree

September Fields

Frazey Ford, of The Be Good Tanyas, here recording with Al Green’s backing band at Royal Studios in Memphis. Such a regal sound and such an addictive song.