The National Gallery: Siena: The Rise of Painting 1300 -1350 Part One

Apologies for the tardiness of this post.  We are still in the midst of family illness.

Introduction

   I feel I should have done some research before going to this exhibition, which is a collaboration between the Metropolitan Museum in New York and The National Gallery in London.  It would certainly have helped, for although filled with beautiful and lustrous images, this is a hard exhibition to take in.  As I said to a friend later that day over lunch, there is a limit to the number of panel paintings one can take in at one sitting, and I write as somebody who usually loves this sort of thing, but something, for me at least, was not quite right.

'The Art that shaped the Future': Art History in the Age of Stupid?

     For the ignorant, and I think I may include myself in that category, Sienese art of the Middle Ages being a bit esoteric, both galleries have produced introductory videos to the exhibition.

    The Met video features the James Pope-Hennessy Curator in Charge of European Painting, Stephan Wolohojian and Caroline Campbell, then Curator of Italian Art at the National Gallery.  At one point Wolohijan said: '[....] in the last years of the 1340s Europe is infested by the Black Death, this great plague that was especially present in Italy, so by the end of our story none of these artists survive."  The implication being they had all died of the plague. This is nonsense. Of the four artists that this exhibition focuses upon, Ambrogio Lorenzetti and his brother Pietro may indeed have died of plague, but Duccio died c1318 and Simone Martini died in Avignon in 1344 at the age of 60.  Towards the end of the video Wolohojian stands in front of the beautiful 'Christ Discovered in the Temple' by Simone Martini with its delicate cusped & subcusped Gothic arch and lilting Gothic folds in the clothing of the three figures and says: "No gable, no Gothic form, a truly kind of framed painting, the way you could see made today...." Why do people make such statements like that, when, in this particular context, the exhibition is filled from beginning to end with panel paintings in square frames without 'no gable, or Gothic form'?
     The National Gallery video, grandiloquently subtitled 'The Art that shaped the Future', features, amongst others, a local Sienese artist Chiara Perinetti Casoni, who has it appears a real downer on Byzantine art. (I hate how in order to re-enforce an argument it is done at the expense of something else.)  She seems to speaking from a place of ignorance and one perhaps tainted by a certain anti-clericalism. In common with the other talking heads she presents a view of Byzantine art that is crude and almost unrecognisable.   She implied, for instance, that Byzantine icons were produced solely by religious ie monks.  However, icons were created both in a monastic and secular milieu.  There were professional secular artists in the Empire creating icons in a workshop system that couldn't have been that different from the one operating in Siena. Too much Vasari, and too much Romanticism.  Certainly this whole exhibition is indebted to Georgio Vasari and his book 'The Lives of the Most Excellent Artists, Sculptors, and Architects' .

     A claim is made in both videos that the icon tradition is 'rigid', 'rote and stale' and yet icons developed over time just like any other pictorial art, for example the introduction of Chrysography or 'striations'.  Contrary to the impression given, the depiction of the Virgin & Child in Orthodox iconography is not tied to the 'Hodegetria' type, which, according to legend, was established by St Luke the Evangelist.  There are other ways depicting the Theotokos and Child eg. 'Panakranta', 'Pelagonitissa' and most importantly in this context the 'Eleusa'.  According to Wiki it is sometimes referred to the in the West as the 'Virgin of Tenderness'.  Perhaps the most famous example of this type is the Vladimirskaya which dates from c 1130.  So claims that the it was the artists of Siena - 'true artists', mind you - those men, 'whose blood boiled' and 'felt strong emotions' who introduced tenderness & emotion into the dead language of Byzantium have to be taken with a pinch of salt.  Italian artists before Duccio were producing art with emotion; for example there is the work of the Florentine artist Meliore di Jacopo (fl 1255-85).  Two of his paintings spring to mind: The Madonna and Child with Two Angels, c 1270-75, and The Enthroned Madonna and Child of the same period.

     But then, sadly, although this exhibition opens movingly with a room of icons from the city, it underplays the role of those images in the religious and civic life of the contemporaneous Italian city: there were, for example, processions of icons in Rome and in the cities of Lazio to the south, and in Siena itself, where in addition the cathedral and San Niccolo al Carmine possessed miracle-working icons of the Virgin Mary.  In researching for this post I soon realised that I knew very little about the cultural spread of Byzantine art in Northern Italy.  The presence of Byzantine culture in Venice I understood, and in southern Italy and Sicily too where there were then still Greek speaking communities worshipping according the Byzantine rite. 

      What, however, was worse about these productions is that virtually no speaker in either video could bring themselves to say 'Byzantine', 'Gothic' or 'International Gothic'.  And these are the categories, the concepts, after all, that exhibition is dealing with. 

     You know, looking at these videos I felt just that bit cheated - I mean, all this people educated - lengthily, expensively, exclusively - talking with all the inanity of a fashion journalist.  PR rules.

    

Cecil Beaton at The Garden Museum II

 

'We ate breakfast drank hot drinks and enjoyed the spectacle confronting us of the garlanded house, the ilex trees with bird-cages hanging from their dark moss-green branches in the light of the early morning sun.  The windows of the orangery, still lit from within displayed a word of artificially brilliant colours.  I felt that, as ever, Ashcombe had played up to the occasion.'

     And so, finally, to 'Cecil Beaton's Garden Party'.  This small exhibition, which has been curated by Emma House, and designed by the interior designer and illustrator Luke Edward Hall, looks at Beaton as a creator of gardens that act (in a sort Baroque manner) as a unifying element in his life, being not merely the physical backdrop to his rich social life and his photography, but the inspiration to further creativity.  It was perhaps fitting, and purely serendipitous, I hasten to add, that I should have visited the exhibition in Ascot Week.

     Perhaps at this point a little explanation is needed. Cecil Beaton (1904-1980) was one of the most important, and influential, British photographers of the mid 20th century.  He was also a designer for stage and film.  He won an 'Academy Award for Costume Design' for his work on Vincent Minnelli's 1958 adaptation of 'Gigi'; and (more importantly for this exhibition) two further Oscars for Best Costume Design and Best Art Direction for George Cukor's 1964 adaptation of Lerner and Loewe's musical 'My Fair Lady'.*  He has been described as a polymath. Beaton was also a dandy, with amazing personal style. An aesthete. An inhabitant of the Beau Monde. He was a (waspish) diarist, and as this exhibition neatly shows, a very keen gardener.  Piquant and perennially fascinating; perhaps his greatest work of art was himself.

     Beaton created two gardens in his life, both in Wiltshire: Ashcombe and Reddish (actually they sound like a - What? - A solicitors? A department store?).  In the interwar years at Ashcombe (he lived there 1930-45) there were flamboyant fetes - all those 'bright young things' nipping around dressed as nymphs and shepherds, and all that. Life at Reddish, where he lived from 1947 until his death in 1980, was perhaps a bit more sedate, but there was a steady stream of 'the great and the good' including the sort that this blog admires: David Hockney & Peter Schlesinger, Sir Roy Strong & Julia Trevelyan Oman, Patrick Proctor.   

      Luke Edward Hall has decorated the exhibition space - tin foil in the display cases - with a nod to Beaton's early portraiture when he was heavily influenced by Surrealism and did strange things with Edith Sitwell.  The exhibition gives a rounded sense of Beaton the man - of a life, one might say - with paintings, designs and letters and objects.  Of his work for stage and screen the exhibition concentrated on three works: 'The Chalk Garden' (1955), the opera 'Turandot' (1962-3), and 'My Fair Lady' (1964).  There are number of still photographs - studio shots - of the costumes used on the film, including from the famous Ascot scene.  I loved the film poster for 'My Fair Lady' with artwork by Bob Peak - which manages somehow to show Rex Harrison for the randy old goat he was.

 'My garden, is the greatest joy of my life, after my friends.  Both are worth living for.'

    The Garden Museum is, by rights, the sort of place I'd love -  it was in parts fascinating - but in general the place was tired, lost and dirty, in places just downright filthy.   And there there was the 'cooler than thou' attitude of the staff in the café.  It was like intruding upon a private party rather than a public space. 

*  I remember when I first saw 'My Fair Lady'.  It was Christmas Day, BBC1 (they had dropped the Christmas Day circus by then).  It was a minor cultural event, and I was bowled over.

London

       To a sultry London on Sunday for a few days and hefty dose of culture, and (it could be argued) you can't get more cultural or arcane than an exhibition of Medieval Sienese religious art at the National Gallery.  That was Monday morning.  I intended to post everything in order over the next few weeks or so, but I still need time to form a response to the art on display, so I will have to return to this topic at a later date when my thoughts are clearer.  (You may, perhaps, want to read this 'reluctance' on my part as a tacit admission that I wasn't that impressed, but I couldn't possibly comment.)  the two phots below were taken in Covent Garden on the way to the National Gallery.

     It's funny how on these little trips of mine themes sort of emerge from the serendipitous.  On this particular visit three themes emerged.  The first was Post-Modernism.  After the exhibition, and a visit to the remarkable Maison Berteaux on Greek St., I headed into Covent Garden via Seven Dials to buy a new shirt. I couldn't resist, however, popping into the Ching Court.  A triangular public space formed out of a chaos of backyards and sheds in the centre of the urban block created by Monmouth, Mercer and Shelton Streets - the so-called Comyn Ching Triangle. The result is a beautiful, serene piece of urbanism.  It is an early work (1978-86) by the architect Terry Farrell, combining in a Geddesian manner the old (Georgian terrace houses) and the new (three new architectural interventions - one at each corner).  How one felt the optimism of those heady days when it seemed that Modernism was finished!  I particularly like the detailing of the three wooden porches on the w side of the court.

     Afterwards lunch with a friend who now works for another friend Ben Pentreath, at his rather glamorous studio in Lambs Conduit St. We ate at 'La Fromagerie' over the street from Ben's office.  Quite the best gnocchi I have eaten in a long time.  A rushed supper at 'Hare and Tortoise' in Bloomsbury interrupted by extraordinary behaviour of a diner when her child misbehaved and that left the other diners open mouthed in disbelief.  From there to the Art Workers Guild where RIBA TAG was having a symposium and summer party.  I managed to arrive very late, all the chairs were taken, the speeches dull and the heating was on. I lasted half an hour before leaving.

Further Reading

'Terry Farrell' (Architectural Monographs No9), Terry Farrell & Frank Russell, Academy Editions, 1985

Aberglasney in the snow

      Woke up this morning to find it had snowed in the night! Not much really but enough, for all my mature years, to get a little excited. Here are a few photographs I took of the gardens at Aberglasney when I arrived at what is the final day of my current exhibition.  It is quite remarkable how even a light dusting of snow completely alters one's perception of a space or landscape.

I Love the snow, the crumpling snow,

That hangs on everything,

It covers everything below

Like white dove's brooding wing,

A landscape to the aching sight,

A vast expanse of dazzling light.

It is the foliage of the woods

That winters bring - the dress,

White Easter of the year in bud,

That makes the winter spring.

Exhibition

      My annual exhibition at Aberglasney Gardens in Carmarthenshire is currently underway.  Here are a few images of the event.  The exhibition remains open until Thursday.

Exhibition

   

 

     I am pleased to announce my next exhibition will be at Aberglasney Gardens, Carmarthenshire 22.03.24 - 28.03.24.  The gardens are open 10am-5pm everyday.  Do pop along if you can!

Two Exhibitions

     Thursday was spent in London, in Mayfair and St James's.  I took in two exhibitions; one a planned visit and the second a happy happenstance. 

     First then off to the RA and, having braved the rather officious woman at the desk, the 'Impressionists on Paper: Degas to Toulouse-Lautrec' exhibition.  This, it has to be said, a slightly misleading title as the hanging did not begin and end with either.  It ended, if I remember rightly, with the Symbolists, or was it perhaps Cezanne? I can't rightly remember. Maybe it was the chest infection that I was incubating, but to be truthful there was a lot of work on display that has completely eluded my recollection. And here I have to confess that Impressionism does not do much for me. I mean it's pleasant enough, the oil paintings and all that, but 'is that all there is?' I always go to this sort of exhibition in the hope that I'll get it, and this particularly exhibition - which in this week's Speccie is described as a 'once-in-a-lifetime show' - sadly, did little to alter my opinion. It really must be me then.
     So what do I remember actually remember? Well, there were a number of studies of dancers by Degas - obligatory, really - some rather brooding studies by Seurat and a couple of fine portraits; a Renoir - rather sugary, perhaps, but a wonderful lesson in the use of pastel and one, all piss and vinegar, by Toulouse-Lautrec.
     And, oh, there were also a couple of watercolours by Pissarro. Alas. I've encountered his watercolours before at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge way back in 2015. I'm never quite sure why they're ever displayed as they really are quite dreadful.  His talents obviously lay elsewhere.  Cezanne's 'Flowerpots on the Terrace of the Artist's Studio at Les Lauves' is a watercolour on a completely different level.
     Afterwards I went to the RA Grand Cafe, which is a space I rather love. Designed by the great Richard Norman Shaw (1831-1912), it still appears fresh and original today. In addition room is decorated with large paintings by RA members.

     I then had a wander around that net work of streets behind the RA, popping into Messums on Cork St. where there were some wonderful ceramics by Makoto Kagoshima were on display. I crossed Piccadilly for shopping and quite by accident found 'One Hundred Drawings and Watercolours from the eighteenth to the 21st centuries' curated by Freya Mitton, Guy Peppiatt and Harry Moore-Gwyn. Much more to my liking than the RA exhibition what with work by Mark Hearld, John Sell Cotman, John Nash, John Piper, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Keith Vaughan, Barbara Jones, Barnett Freedman, Robert Taverner and Edward Bawden. My cup did overflow.

London

Kanst du das Land, wo zitronen bluhn,
Im dunklen laub die goldorangen gluhn,

Ein sanfter Wind vom blauen himmel weht, 

Die Myrte still und hoch der Lorbeer stedt?

     To London last week and a busy schedule; two parties, a couple of exhibitions and a trip to Cambridge - but more of that in a later post. And all the time, unfortunately incubating a chest infection.

     I was actually in London for the Traditional Architecture Group Awards, held, as usual, at the Art Workers Guild in Bloomsbury. Two speeches were made that evening that were both a bit above the ordinary; the first from Ben Pentreath and the other by the winner of the Life Time Achievement Award, Craig Hamilton.  
     Ben made a tangential reference to our current cultural difficulties by reference, correctly, to Mao's Cultural Revolution.  Mention was made of the 'Four Olds' that were the  targets of the revolutionary mobs - old ideas, old culture, old customs, old habits. He acknowledged that the older he grew the greater his attachment to the the four olds grew. It was both a warning of things to come in the short term and a rallying point & call to action. A more optimistic speech, perhaps, than my brief description suggests.

     Craig Hamilton's speech was brief - one felt that he found public speaking a bit of a task. Modest too, even humble. What he did do however, much to my pleasure, was quote from Goethe - the quotation at the top of this post. It translates as follows:

Do you know the land where the lemon flowers,

In dark leaves the golden oranges glow,

a soft wind blows the from pure blue sky,

The Myrtle still, and the laurel tree high?

     It is a poem of longing for the south and, by extension, the Classical past. It reminds me of the trips south made by the British Gothic Revival architect Sir Ninian Comper. It was, and I can't emphasize this enough, so good to hear a serious writer, or thinker quoted publicly in a speech.  All too often these days, and especially amongst politicians, it is a rare thing.  One wants a bit more heft. Is that really too much to ask for?

Exhibtion

 Well, here I am sitting in the gallery at Aberglasney and tapping away at my keyboard. There is mist in the valley and the smell of woodsmoke on the air.  The sunshine is delicate and intermittent. Autumn is here in rural Wales. Here are some photos I have just taken of my current exhibition - it will last until close of play on Thursday. Enjoy.

Hill-Rhythms: David Jones and Capel-y-ffin

     It was in the Black Mountains that I made some drawings which it so happens, appear, in retrospect, to have marked a new beginning.  I began at this time to see the direction I wanted to go - or at least to see it more clearly.  My subsequent work can, I think, be truthfully said to hinge on that period. All my exhibited work dates from after that period, none, or virtually none, from before it.

     .....it was at this propitious time that circumstances occasioned my living in nant Honddu, there to feel the impact of the strong hill-rhythms and the bright counter-rhythms of the afonydd dyfroedd which makes much of Wales such a 'plurabelle' - and there was also the rhythm of the ninth wave breaking on the morlan of Penfro.'

     Very nearly a month ago, on our return journey to the Infernal City we stopped off in Brecon and 'Y Gaer' the rather architecturally vapid new 'cultural hub' (I posted about it here.) to see the current exhibition of paintings, drawings, prints and calligraphy by the twentieth century visionary artist/poet David Jones (1895-1974). Happily while the new building is sub-parr, the exhibition is most certainly not. It really is excellent, as is the catalogue written by Dr Peter Wakelin.

     I first came across the work of David Jones as a teenager on what was must have been my first visit to Kettle's Yard in Cambridge, the exquisite former home of a friend of Jones, the curator Jim Ede.  Here is my post about that extraordinary interior. If memory serves me well there are four works by Jones on display - all I think from later in his life.*  This excellent exhibition, however, focuses on the two short years when Jones lived intermittently at Capel-y-ffin in the Honddu valley deep in the Black Mountains close to the English Border.  An isolated place far removed from the world, that had attracted artists such as Turner & John Sell Cotman in the nineteenth century and Ravilious & Piper in the twentieth. Jones called it 'an enchanted place'.

     Jones moved to Capel-y-ffin in 1924 when he was 29 years of age and engaged to Petra, the daughter of the artist/craftsman Eric Gill. Jones was then a postulant in the Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic which Gill, along with Hilary Peplar had set up in 1920 for Catholic craftsmen, at Ditchling just below the South Downs, in Sussex. As a guild member Jones was also a third order, or Tertiary, Dominican, though apparently not through enthusiasm, but because it was simply what one did there. 

     A lot of words have been spilt about Gill since the publication of Fiona McCarthy's biography of the craftsman/artist in 1989.** I don't want to add too many more, but I will quote something the science fiction writer Frank Herbert said about charismatic leadership: 'I had this idea that charismatic leaders ought to come with a warning label on the forehead: 'May be dangerous to your health.'  Well, Gill, for all his talents, certainly turned out to be dangerous to the health. It is certainly tempting to view Gill, who lived a life of extreme contradiction, like a Late Sixties guru figure, surrounded by a small coterie of admirers and their families. 

     In a strange act of synchronicity Gill established his new community at Capel-f-ffin in the collection of buildings left by a failed Anglican religious community established by the so-called Fr Ignatius, a charismatic leader not unlike Gill. Both men were governed by their vanity, their ego. Both men had troubled relationships with their sexuality. And their attempts at community living eventually failed.***

     Walter David Jones was born in London of an Welsh father and English mother, and he was to remain an essentially, and paradoxically, urban artist. His early life was lived on the suburban fringes of the capital, and it was there he began to identify not with the surrounding culture with its increasing disenchantment, but with that of his father and in particular with the British Heroic Age - the world of the Mabinogion and Arthur; of Y Gododdin and Aneurin; of Taliesin and the Hen Ogledd.  He ditched his first name as too English, in favour of his second.  All, I would suggest, examples of Jones's growing estrangement from urban Modernity, and his mother's culture and, perhaps, even his mother. In researching this piece I got side-tracked by the story of another charismatic anglo-catholic monastic, Aelred Carlyle, abbot of the anglican monastery he established on the island of Caldey off the coast of Pembrokeshire; in particular I was struck by a comment made by the novelist Dame Rose Macaulay in her Forward to Peter Anson's biography of Carlyle. She said of Carlyle that 'He seemed to live from boyhood in a romantic dream.' Well, I wouldn't go that far in my description of Jones, but there is an element of truth to it. I think he came to live in a world of the imagination, in the 'imaginal realm' perhaps.

     At the age of 14 he started his formal art education at Camberwell School of Art. In 1915, at the age of 20 and in the second year of the Great War, and after at least one previous attempt to enlist, Jones enrolled in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. He never quite recovered from his experience of the Western Front; his adult life being repeatedly disrupted by prolonged periods of mental ill health. The War, I suspect, exacerbating pre-existent issues. 

     Upon his return to civilian life at the end of the War Jones returned to his education. In 1921 he converted to Roman Catholicism and the catholic faith would remain crucial to Jones and increasingly at the heart of his work. It was at the suggestion of the priest preparing him for Baptism that Jones came into contact with Eric Gill and the community he and others had created at Ditchling. He was not the only man damaged by his experience of war to find solace in the life of the community.

     In 1924 the life of the Guild was seriously disrupted by Gill's decision to leave for Capel. The situation became rancorous and resulted in Gill leaving the Guild as well as Ditchling. Gill's departure left a residue of bitterness among those who remained in Sussex and continued with the Guild. A bitterness that lingered for decades.  Yet for all the disruption, the unhappiness it caused for some, the move to Capel formed for Jones some sort of integration, or axial alignment; like his conversion to Roman Catholicism a homecoming of sorts. He had essentially entered into his own mythos.  After the horrors of war he had become re-enchanted.  The effect on his art was immediate; a new style sprang, like Minerva from the head of Jovis, fully formed.

     His reaction to this new environment is illustrated in fifteen landscape paintings - mixed media, mainly watercolour and ink - from this important period in Jones's career, and which form the core of the exhibition. A clear line of development is readily apparent as the style becomes increasingly dense and complex. The influence of Gill and Paul Nash is readily apparent. 

     A continual presence in these paintings was Twmpa, the mountain at the confluence of the Nant Bwch with the River Honddu, a breast of consolation, that reminds me of the presence of Mont St Victoire in the late works of Cezanne.

     In some paintings, most obviously in 'Melting Snow' of 1925 where a hillside looks like a woman's breast and belly, Jones anthropomorphises the landscape. 

     The opposite applies to at least one of the three large portraits at the exhibition, that of Gill's daughter Petra, 'Petra in Rosenhag', dated 1931 with her slyly erotic expression, in which the folds of her dress are metamorphosed into a landscape.  A painting, I have to say, that is an altogether different league from the other portraits that surrounds it.  Evidence, one feels, for a continued emotional link between sitter and artist long after the end of their engagement. 

     There is, I believe, the outline of Twmpa between the sitter's breasts - one might say over her heart. Peter Wakelin is surely right to describe this image as archetypal. It is iconic - in the original and correct meaning on the word; for Jones here presents Petra as the Jungian archetype of the Great Mother, here as the guardian of the 'Vegetation Mysteries', her right hand nestling sensually in the deep, cave-like folds of her dress.**** And yet for all the great sensuousness of this painting there lies threat also; the flowers are benign enough but the wisps of Petra's hair, like dry, winter twigs, suggest a wilder nature.

     Space is also given to the applied art he made at Capel such as his woodblock prints, and examples of his late work, both painting and calligraphic. The result forms an excellent introduction to Jones's life and work for those who come to him fresh. 

     Those years at Capel-y-ffin were longest period Jones was to spend in the Principality. With the collapse of his relationship with Petra Gill he returned to his parents in London and apart from the odd short visit, he was to remain in the capital for the rest of his life. Wales became, as Shropshire did for A E Housman, a 'land of lost content'. In a sense it was a life lived in exile

       In 2015 The Guardian ran an article suggesting that we were in for a revival in interest in David Jones. Well, sadly, it hasn't happened. For all the recognition he received from the likes of T S Elliot and Kenneth Clarke, I suspect it never will; at least not in our current cultural climate which is among so many other things, deeply secular.  I think this is reflected, sadly, in the lack of media attention this excellent exhibition received.  Jones and his work is, now, simply, beyond our comprehension.

    In the later works, for example, there is a deeply personal and complex symbolism that perhaps defies categorising.  It is also the work of somebody with 'issues', rather like the work of the nineteenth century English artist Richard Dadd whose late work shares certain characteristics with late Jones.  I place him, not only in the broad sweep of Romanticism and Neo-Romanticism, but more specifically in a continuum with Blake and his followers such a Samuel Palmer, though Jones's work evokes none of disquiet, or unease found the work of Blake. One feels that all four of these artists had somehow been in contact with the 'unseen' - whether that is internal or exterior to themselves, I don't know, and for the majority of people that is, perhaps, something disturbing.

     Jones will always to a lesser or greater extent remain an outsider. 

* I remember three images in particular: the painting 'Flora in Calix Light, 1950; and the calligraphy: 'Quia incarnatus est' of 1953, 'Tailpiece for the Rime of the Ancient Mariner' of 1928 

** Fiona MacCarthy, 'Eric Gill', Faber and Faber, London, 1989

*** The relationship between both Gill and 'Fr Ignatius' and Dom Aelred Carlyle is fascinating, but beyond the scope of this post. But essentially all three were to some point fantasists driven by their egos, which if they were to achieve what wanted they should have endeavoured to brake. Gill, for instance, was once described as 'A fine draughtsman, a vain poseur, a tiresome writer....he behaved like a vain willful child.'

**** See Erich Neumann's 'The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype', 1963

Exhibition

     It's now a month until my solo exhibition (20th-26th Oct) at Aberglasney Gardens in Carmarthenshire (just off the A40 between Carmarthen and Llandeilo).  If you're around pop-in!  Gardens open 10am and close at 6pm (last entry at 5pm).

 

Exhibition

     Back to Aberglasney in Carmarthenshire for what has turned out to be my annual summer exhibition there. And I was blessed with quite a success this year, selling more pictures than at any of my previous exhibitions. Many thanks to the lovely people at Aberglasney for helping make it all happen.

London I: pop-up at Pentreath and Hall.

     I can't believe that is over a fortnight now since I returned from two weeks in London, where I had the good fortune to host a pop-up exhibition of my artwork at Pentreath and Hall. Rather invigorating being back in the capital. Here are some photos of the event. 

     Before opening up of a morning I took the opportunity to explore Bloomsbury. As you can imagine I ate out a lot. So what would I recommend in Bloomsbury? The best food I ate was a lunch at Noble Rot, the wine bar in Lambs Conduit St, for food and atmosphere 'Ciao Bella' also in Lambs Conduit St. - a really vibrant 'old school' Italian restaurant. Good fish & chips at North Sea Fish in Leigh St, good pizza at Franco Manco by Russell St tube. I enjoyed the food at Hare & Tortoise in the Brunswick Centre, but the restaurant is impossibly noisy. I also went to a Greek restaurant, which shall be nameless: the food was good but the service was lamentable.

Exhibition

     I'm very pleased, excited and not a little daunted (not to mentioned honoured!) to be finally exhibiting this year at my friend Ben Pentreath's shop 'Pentreath and Hall' in Rugby St., which he runs with Bridie Hall. 

     As you may be aware we have all been labouring under a little local difficulty and this exhibition had originally been planned for last year. 'The best laid schemes o' mice an' men/ Gang aft a-gley.' Anyway this will be my first solo exhibition in London and will run from 6th September until the 17th - so just under two months away. Do please pop-in to say 'hello' if you're passing!

Exhibitions at Aberglasney

     I was delighted to be asked to contribute some work to the current group exhibition at Aberglasney, the wonderful gardens near between Llandeilo and Carmarthen. On Monday, a day of fog and mist and cold dampness, Manon (who is in charge of exhibitions and events at Aberglasney) and I spent the morning hanging the work. It was great working with her - lovely to talk about art with a fellow enthusiast. The show closes at the end of February.
     Anyway I thought take this opportunity to tell you that my next solo show, which will also be at Aberglasney, will be in less than four months time: 22.05.20 - 28.05.20.

     Afterwards I had a wander around.  It was all very atmospheric, especially up around the church which looked as though it was a setting for one of the BBC's 1970s adaptation of M R James.