It is strange, given I work in London and am on an Art Degree, that this was my first visit to the National Gallery. In visiting the Gallery I needed to focus, at least to a degree, and so I chose to consider primarily Landscape images. That didn’t restrict me too much, as there are large numbers of them in there, but it at least allowed me to have a meaningful approach.
Continue reading “Visit to the National Gallery”
My artistic excuse for this visit was nominally the current exhibition of work by Rembrandt – though I never need much of an excuse for a visit. I didn’t limit myself to the Rembrandt work though, and so the range of interesting work was quite wide, as the following image summary illustrates:
Continue reading “Visit to the British Museum”
This started a productive week and weekend of art visits. I happen to be working very near the Tate Modern at the moment, and so decided to “pop in” over a couple of lunch time sessions. Even in such short sessions I managed to see a lot of new material, and found Galleries I hadn’t been in before. The following image summary gives an idea of the range:
Continue reading “Visit to the Tate Modern”
We were recently in Bruges for the Wintervonken (Winter sparks) festival. As we were there for a few days we also decided to get a general “Museum Pass” – which turned out to be a very good plan. We spent quite a bit of the trip looking at Art in the Museums.
Continue reading “Brugge Art Galleries”With my previous experience of Picasso’s work I looked forward to seeing this exhibition. The year was very productive for Picasso, and he was inspired by a new mistress.
I recently ran into Susan Gathercole’s work. Looking at her web site’s Galleries there were pieces from the last few years present. The work seems to have been inspired by a range of artists, including Picasso. She doesn’t try for a highly realistic view, and has some of the multi-viewpoint properties of other artists. (I have to assume this is intentional, rather than due to lack of skill.) The colours she uses are rich and representational, and there is some feeling of depth from the use of tone.
Overall, I like her work because of it conveys a feeling about the subject as much of the reality of the subject. As always, it is worth seeing personally rather than via Internet based images if you get the opportunity.
Featured image: Stella and Sissie Rum Cup, Susan Gathercole, 2018, from http://www.susangathercole.co.uk/gallery_735176.html#photos_id=16052160
Back in February I visited this exhibition, and for various reasons I keep coming back to think about it. Unfortunately you couldn’t take photographs and there is little about the exhibition available on the Internet. The works were highly varied, within the theme of the Nigerian civil war. This is a subject that I have little personal connection with, but it has made me think about artists’ responses to such events and the fallout from them.
Continue reading “Art being viewed…”
One of the influences that I have is a regular supply of images and works from the Internet. Some of these come through Twitter (See https://twitter.com/waddy100), others from new articles and so forth. Most of these will go unrecorded, and float through. Some of these end up referenced in blogs and considered more formally – and a very few will end up printed and considered in my physical sketchbooks. I view and collect far more material, however, than I would ever write up in any formal way. I have, therefore, decided to acknowledge and comment on a small proportion of it. This is, in effect, an electronic extension of my physical sketchbook for recording the art I view and my thoughts on it.
Continue reading “Art being viewed…”
Sharpened 4B mechanical pencil in a white sketchbook, and using a putty rubber. It was interesting that whilst doing the second sketch I got the expected attention to the drawing process. What was less expected is that during the time I was sketching I collected about 5 other people around me who started doing the same.
The featured image was taken as I walked across the famous wobbly bridge from St Paul’s Cathedral across to the Tate Modern gallery. I was going to meet up with an OCA tutor and group of students to see the Modigliani exhibition. We met up with the tutor Gerald Deslandes, and received a brief introduction and then went on in. Although I went in with two others we didn’t stay together for long, though met up a few times around the show.
We recently visited Iceland, partly to see the Northern Lights, and as part of the trip we got a 48h City Card for Reykjavik. The card is an excellent investment due to the number of museums and art galleries it gets you into. One of these is the National Gallery. Continue reading “Icelandic National Gallery Visit”
This is an interesting discovery, from one of the OCA Discussion forums:Â https://issuu.com/hcalibrary5Â
Of particular interest is: Continue reading “Free old books…”
On my way up the country to a family holiday in Cumbria we stopped off at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. This was planned as a stop over in the long trip from Kent, but gave me a good opportunity to take in some art along the way. There was a great deal to see, and if you’ve never visited and get the chance plan to spend a while there if you can. The following outline a few highlights of this trip. This write up is bereft of images as I have no idea on the copyright issues of including them. I have, however, included links that are worth following for images and more information. Continue reading “A trip to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park”
I managed to visit the British Museum over the weekend, visiting the African Art and Picasso prints exhibitions. They were both worthy of the time, which much to recommend them. Continue reading “British Museum: African Art”
I has taken a while, but I’ve made it to the end of Kandinsky’s Concerning the spiritual in Art, mentioned in my previous post. I’d (more or less) made it through his writing on the general aesthetic at the end of the last post. I’ll pick up Part II (About Painting) now. Continue reading “Kandinsky (Continued)”
We were in Bruges and ran into a Picasso exhibition. It’s a very interesting exhibition of 300+ of his pieces. Many were from Sketchbooks. One sequence, for example, was a number of drawings done about the same model. I’d speculate from the same sitting. There was quite a variation in style and approach across them, giving an idea of how Picasso approached his work. Continue reading “Exhibition: XPO Picasso”
I was recently viewing the work of Jon Hul. He produces pieces of work that are so detailed that they are, in effect, indistinguishable from photographs. Given that, however, can this be considered more valuable than the photograph it was presumably copied from? The artist in question has spent years perfecting his skills to produce such an image. This level of realism, however, could have been produced in a much simpler fashion – by printing the photograph. Continue reading “Realism and Art”
I have been reading a paper copy [1] of this work on my tutor’s recommendation, and it is readily available online in electronic form [2]. Although not an easy read it has definitely provided me with a lot of food for thought on aspects of art which I haven’t previously considered. Kandinsky was a prolific artist who lived and worked at the back end of the 19th and early 20th century. This work is a paper that presents his “theory of art” at a point in time. The following outlines my thoughts on the different parts of the work. Continue reading “Kandinsky and Spirituality in Art”
