Category: art

  • Berardo Gallery, Lisbon

    It started with a ‘bucket list’. After twenty years travelling Europe, the US and Africa there are a few places I still want to visit – and no, I don’t need anymore suggestions, thanks… In the past I have visited over 30 countries, but there are places I still want to go, experiences I still…

  • Teasel 2

    The ‘Teasel’ painting has come out appearing quite violent, and in my own mind I think of it as ‘War’, the disappearing grid reflecting the breakdown in the rules based international order that has seen Russia and China blatantly ignoring the rules of international behaviour to push forward their own power grabs knowing no-one wants…

  • Time Lapse

    I have been blessed that my cancer is ‘cured’, but I have another test on the 6th June, so the saga continues. Johns’ disease has not improved. We share a past, both having attended the same junior school in Wroughton, Wiltshire, and crossed paths again as students at Corsham, then Bath Academy of Art, in…

  • Out to Grass

    the guys would wave and say hello as we mowed their lawns. On one very hot day, I was welcomed with a glass of cooling orange squash. I gulped it down only belated realising it had been diluted with Polish vodka rather than water

  • When will they ever Learn?

    Life expectancy of my son’s generation may even be lower than that of mine because of their obesity and associated problems. In recent years in the US, Australia and South Africa voices have been raised in favour of low carb diets as a way of reversing Type 2 without resort to drugs. Those voices, Atkins…

  • Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa

    If you are a designer, you will enjoy Heatherwick’s spatial planning (I imaging the studio had much fun slicing toilet rolls in modelling) and the drama of the interiors. If you are in to art, then the exhibitions will be thought provoking and will leave you wanting to revisit.The building is a true cathedral devoted…

  • Found Art

    “Painting is washed up. Who will ever do anything better than that propeller? Tell me, can you do that?”. Marcel Duchamp 1912 It started with Duchamp’s signature on a urinal. Making a point? Or just a comment on the art around him? Was it really saying this is great art? It was a gesture that…

  • Teasing teasels

    They were used in industry to tease out threads from wool for spinning. Using photographs and drawings I am teasing out ideas about expressing their structure through colour on both canvas, and if I can figure out a simple way of doing it, in 3D too. I have been walking to regrow muscle and strength…

  • Lanzarote’s Eco-artist

    Lanzarote’s Eco-artist

    Lanzarote is considered by many César Manrique’s most important work of art. His work and influence have marked the external aspect of the island. The natives say that he has “made” Lanzarote. His desire to live with the volcanic lava led him to build his own house in the Taro de Tahiche, now open as…

  • Art: The Future is Yours

    Art: The Future is Yours

    Painting like many other creative areas, is more than just a set of skills, much more. I gained a set of spiritual beliefs that I have tried to live by, and which have enriched my life immeasurably. Apart from anything else my visual training has provided eminently transferable skills I have used across a range…

  • Alternative Art Gallery

    Alternative Art Gallery

    The camera helps me in my visual playground. It is responsive and instantaneous, and so easy to dispose of unsatisfactory images. It is a strand of my art that I am weaving more and more into finished pieces.  This day was particularly visually rich.  

  • Cliff Walk 27

    Cliff Walk 27

    Yesterday the wind howled across the waves. Spume blew across the shingle and was carried through the air like partially deflated party balloons. Wind driven spray broke hard against the cliffs sending a fine mist of saltwater high into the air. Salt obscured my glasses as raindrops rattled on my hood like buckshot.