Rowley Gallery Blog
It’s April 2023, and I will be 70 years old. What better way to mark the occasion than to plant 70 trees, not in the ground, but in the window of the Rowley Gallery. I sent out a call to 70 artists and got lots of replies. I could plant a small forest. So here’s a small celebration of trees, of their variety and complexity, their shelter and enchantment, and all their green, filtered, numinous enlightenment. Continue reading “70 Trees”
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”
It’s like a compilation album with hits from all your favourite artists. They just take a bit of finding. And whilst you’re looking you might discover something new, something previously overlooked. You might even need to come inside and look around. But quick, it’s getting late. Continue reading “A Winter Windowland”
photo: Alastair Grant
Kai arrived at The Rowley Gallery over 30 years ago, I can’t be sure of the exact date, but her name back then was Kathy. And to all who knew her in pre-Rowley days she always remained Kathy. But there was already another Cathy at The Rowley Gallery so she abbreviated her name to Ka. That was her Chinese name. But pronounced Kai, so that was how she spelt it thereafter. To avoid confusion. Continue reading “For Kai”
And three parrots. Our window this month at the Rowley Gallery is home to a diverse flock of brightly coloured miniature tropical birds. It’s an aviary of twelve unique life-size watercolour paintings. The parrots are screen prints. And they are all by Fanny Shorter, whose work we have been lucky enough to show for the past ten years now, during which time she has developed from a printmaker of exquisite little birds and fishes into an internationally renowned textile designer. So it was a great pleasure to ask her to make twelve little paintings, just for a change. Continue reading “Twelve Little Birds”
Fanny Shorter brought us some of her new parrot prints. These beautifully detailed life-size screenprints are presently perched in our print room. Continue reading “Parrot Prints”
I’m not going to pretend a partridge in a pear tree is the most original of Christmas card ideas but I had been drawing a lot of birds and a lot of fruit and it did fit the brief rather nicely so I didn’t drift too far for inspiration. Continue reading “A Partridge In A Pear Tree”
In November last year Fanny Shorter won the 2014 COADG Bursary which meant that, among other things, she had a film made about her by R&A Collaborations…
Fanny is a designer and printmaker. Her distinctive, detailed work is largely inspired by her very English upbringing. She won the 2014 Confessions of a Design Geek Bursary of which this film was part of the prize.
The daughter of a physics teacher and a music teacher, she grew up in a school in Winchester, surrounded by idyllic countryside and historic buildings in an aesthetically crowded house crammed with prints and patterns on books, plates, cushions, rugs and wallpaper.
English holidays, frequents visits to the V&A, the Natural History Museum and National Trust properties as well as an entire childhood in a school are an evident and enduring influence.
See more by Fanny Shorter at The Rowley Gallery.
Seen on the way to the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow, thanks to God’s Own Junkyard, a parade of shops on Blackhorse Lane feels the William Morris effect, the spirit of regeneration brought to the area by the museum’s own renovation, with maybe a few ripples of Olympic legacy. Continue reading “All Blues”
Kensington Place have transformed their private dining room into #FISHBone, a pop-up diner serving fish and seafood ‘gourmet fast-food style’ during February and March. Continue reading “#FISHBone”