Rowley Gallery Blog
Early one morning driving to work, lamenting the loss of our tree-of-heaven (it was the morning the tree feller was coming back to poison the shoots that were springing up all over our yard), I began to notice previously overlooked trees-of-heaven by the roadside. I’d not realised there were so many. Now I was seeing them everywhere. It seemed like an epidemic. Continue reading “Tree Of Heaven (Slight Return)”
I was delighted this week to have been elected to The London Group, one of the oldest standing artist led organizations in the world and this year celebrating its 100th anniversary. The present membership is around 90 and new members are elected only after being proposed by an existing member and presenting their current work and previous artistic achievement to a committee. Continue reading “The London Group”
On the Spring Bank Holiday weekend, aka Whitsun Bank Holiday or maybe even Whitsuntide, we went down to Kew. It was a slow journey. There was a UEFA Cup Final at Wembley that evening and a Premiership Rugby Final at Twickenham that afternoon, there were roadworks in Ealing and there was a continuous traffic jam around the North Circular. There was a long queue to Kew. By the time we arrived I was stir crazy. Once inside the gates I was snap happy. The resulting photostream begins with eucalyptus, smooth-skinned and animal-like with aromatic blade-shaped leaves. Continue reading “Kew Gardens”
The world’s oldest surviving music hall can still – just – be found…No theatrical facade: just a door set into a peeling wall.
It did take some finding but that’s part of the fun. Once found it’s a place for many happy returns. Wilton’s Music Hall is a fragile survivor, in need of restoration but not too much; it’s shabby chic is a big part of it’s charm. Perhaps stabilisation rather than restoration. Continue reading “Grand Union @ Wilton’s”
I first saw this at Caught By The River and couldn’t resist. Now thanks to tweets by Stephen Fry and Kevin Spacey it seems to have gone viral. It’s a lovely old postcard from Claude Friese-Greene.
These are the Fish & Coal Buildings on the Regent’s Canal at King’s Cross. Often when I pass there’s a cormorant sitting on the chimney. Now it looks like they’ve been ticked by Nike. Over the last few weeks these silver shapes have slowly spread over the surrounding walls and roofs so that now they seem to stretch from Camley Street right round to York Way. Continue reading “Across The Buildings”
Christopher Corr sent us photographs from the top of the Shard. Luckily he has a head for heights. He’d been invited to see the panoramic views across London. He took photographs and made sketches for a painting. A souvenir print will soon be available in the Shard shop. Continue reading “The View”
This is a postcard from the Fashion and Textile Museum, a souvenir of their exhibition Kaffe Fassett: A Life In Colour. It took me back to the 1970s when his influence was everywhere, in style and fashion and probably in my paintings too which were full of colourful stripes in those days. There’s a common myth that the 70s were a brown decade but this exhibition is a reminder that there was an exuberant riot of colour which has continued to the present day. Continue reading “On Bermondsey Street”
I walk through the back streets of Pimlico. Old buildings remodelled, roads resurfaced. Signs changed, decayed. The city is in flux. Its natural state. Each time I walk this route old things have gone. New things arrive only to become worn, textured, old in turn. Continue reading “Schwittering”
Christopher Corr painted this picture to celebrate the opening of the Shard, London’s newest, tallest building. For the past few years we’ve watched it grow from viewpoints all around the city. The inexorable rise of this arrogant and aggressive spike was impossible to ignore. Now it’s here it has quickly become another iconic landmark on the London skyline. A spire with a view – click to ascend and there’s a great view of it from the river here.