Rowley Gallery Blog
This was a few weeks ago, driving back to London down the A4. It was so much more interesting than the slow procession along the M4 to Bristol the day before. Reduced to two lanes, it was being rewired as a smart new motorway. We stopped off at Avebury for old times’ sake. This lovely beech tree was beside the path from the car park to the village, on the edge of the cricket pitch. Continue reading “Avebury”
Twelve framed hand-coloured linocuts by Liz Somerville in our window throughout August and September. They’re part of a suite of 48 prints called The Ways, celebrating four ancient paths through England. There’s also a limited edition concertina booklet of all the images in miniature. Continue reading “The Ways”
Win Green From Berwick Down
We asked Howard Phipps to fill our window with a display of his wood engravings and linocuts. So it seemed like a good idea to go down and collect them, and take a walk around some of the places that had inspired them. We followed a circuit up to Win Green, a prominent landmark and the highest point in Cranborne Chase, crowned by a clump of beech trees on a Bronze Age bowl barrow. Continue reading “To Win Green”
It was a chance discovery, and a beautiful surprise. We were in Bristol for the weekend, looking for a day trip. We consulted the National Trust handbook and Westwood Manor near Bradford on Avon seemed promising, but when we got there we found it was closed. So we carried on down the road, a narrow single-track lane that became evermore enclosed by trees, swallowing us up into its holloway and finally spitting us out into the valley of the Frome river. Continue reading “Iford Manor”
I seem always to have been drawn to trees as a motif in the landscape, possibly because of their strong architectural forms. There are parallels as I am also interested in interior space, and as with interlinking rooms I find receding pathways compelling in the way the eye is taken through the picture plane. Continue reading “Ox Drove”
I’d been looking forward to this for years. Ever since we first had his wood engravings I’d been curious about where they came from. We usually get Howard’s prints in the post or occasionally he might bring us a few, but this time I was invited to go and collect some myself. It was an opportunity to visit his studio, to see how his wood engravings are made and also to discover the landscape that informs them. I left the A303 and followed the A30 down a dead straight Roman road to Stockbridge then along the old drover’s road towards Salisbury. I began to recognise the distinctive local features, the gentle rolling hills, the trees silhouetted against the sky, and I knew I was entering Phipps country. Continue reading “A Short Walk With Howard Phipps”
Heaven’s Gate is a Capability Brown designed viewpoint overlooking Longleat House in Wiltshire. It’s a wonderful spot, a place to relax and drift away as the clouds unfold before your eyes.
The ground rises sharply to the east as far as Park Hill and Prospect Hill, on the top of which a viewpoint known as Heaven’s Gate looks out over the park. The slopes are planted with hanging beech woods, proposed by Brown but planted towards the end of the C18. Continue reading “Heaven’s Rope Swing”