Friday 24 April 2015

Friday Illustration: Moving Day

 

Moving house today; most of my boxes are full of books, creating a little library for myself, now how to organise them!





Friday 17 April 2015

Friday Illustration: Buddha

 

Tolerance & respect can change the world, from respecting people to caring for animals and recycling to help the earth. From learning about other people's religions & cultures to better understand them and respecting different personalities and ways of life.

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle" -Ian Maclaren


Friday 10 April 2015

Friday Illustration: Interior


Interiors are on my brain at the minute from moving house, to swooning over 'The World of Interiors' magazine to painting them and seeing Eric Ravilious' at the Dulwich Picture Gallery; so here's a little quick sketch of a made up one looking very 80's.


Tuesday 7 April 2015

Manchester Exhibitions

 

Here's a few thoughts on some Manchester exhibitions  I've seen recently:-

The Whitworth Art Gallery has always been a favourite gallery to go to, I also helped curate an exhibition there in 2007 for a University project- with a baffling over-the-top title 'The Uncertainty of Identity: The Biographies of Things'. So when they were closed for over a year for a £15million facelift I missed it. But while they haven't done much to the already existing galleries except add more windows onto the park, the new galleries and facilities look and feel fresh, light and innovative. It's just a shame it doesn't flow very well into the old part which looks dated, dark and dismal in comparison.

The opening exhibitions are really worth seeing, I've already seen Cornelia Parker's 'Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View' before a few times at Tate Modern but I was really moved by her 'War Room' made from thousands of the empty sheets of perforated poppies that are made for remembrance day. My favourite was Cai Guo Qiang's huge gunpowder drawing and the accompanying video of him making it and his explosion happenings, a-m-a-z-i-n-g, it's fireworks as paintings, as installation in the air, watch some of them here

http://www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/upcomingexhibitions/thomasschutte/
 I also loved the Thomas Schutte exhibition of prints they were installed in kind of a maze and you could get right up to them and see them, the colours were gorgeous and the drawings spontaneous and deep; thoughts straight onto the page.

 

There was an Easter Island exhibit on at the Manchester Museum where I walked straight past the monument on loan from the British Museum (which isn't much really than a lump of rock) and into the exhibition. I learned quite a lot, I didn't know they were tons and tons of them mostly congregated on the coastline and still in the quarry, or that University of Manchester has been part of some of the excavations over there. But they didn't use the space well, keeping everything close to the walls and not having the very statue from there in the exhibit but out in the noisy entrance high above you, not easily seen and not good.

http://www.manchestergalleries.org/whats-on/exhibitions/easternexchanges.html 

Ceramics, Furniture, Lacquer, Porcelain, there were so many beautiful Eastern objects in this exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery (shame about the wall colour).

http://www.manchestergalleries.org/whats-on/exhibitions/emilyallchurch.html http://www.manchestergalleries.org/whats-on/exhibitions/emilyallchurch.html

Collaged digital photos of old works, this Valette work of Manchester was the best showing the differences in time. The Hiroshige copies were a bit soulless, I just wanted to see the original woodcuts not her lifeless virtual created interpretations of them.

Next I'm off to London for a few days to see Richard Diebenkorn, Sheila Hicks, Eric Ravilious and Marlene Dumas


Friday 3 April 2015

April Playlist: Swedish Spring

 

After a long snowy cold winter there's finally some light (and hopefully heat) on the horizon. Putting the clocks forward here in the UK makes such a difference, having lighter longer evenings. And to fill those evenings you need some Springy Swedish Tunes. Sweden has produced so much amazing music here's some of my faves in my April Playlist. 




{see all my monthly playlists here)

Friday Illustration: Paintings



I'm slowly getting back into painting again, doing some abstract interiors mainly and just experimenting with mixing colours and using oils again.