Lawrence Gordon Ham (1934 – 2007), more commonly known as Larry Ham was born in Newquay in Cornwall. He was trained at the Chelsea School of Art. There he met Vivian Pitchforth, war artist and yet another to make the connection between Wakefield and Cornwall (indirectly I know!). Whereas Pitchforth was more of a classical…
David Hockney (1937-2026)
It was with great sadness that I read of David Hockney’s passing at the weekend. Hockney was a giant of the contemporary art scene, contributing to that great British idea, Pop Art and living through an age of unprecedented change in the technique of painting. A Bigger Splash is the painting which I have chosen to…
Barbara Hepworth at St Ives
Barbara Hepworth, despite being born in West Yorkshire, is synonymous with St Ives, living in that West Cornish town for thirty five years from the outbreak of the Second World War. She was already an established sculptor by then and a pioneer of British abstract art. She set up her studio, Trewyn, in 1949 in the centre…
Forde Abbey in Somerset – My Building for June
Forde Abbey, in Somerset, is the perfect example of a living evolving building. It has seen much change in the last eight hundred years and is still very much alive as a family residence and an example of our national heritage. There was probably a building here before the Cistercian monks arrived in the twelfth…
Medieval Wall Paintings in Kelmscott, Oxfordshire.
Last week we visited the village of Kelmscott and found the wall paintings in St George’s Chapel. The church, a modest limestone building from the fourteenth century, standing quietly beside the Thames meadows is one of the most atmospheric small churches in the county. Its simplicity is part of its charm: a building that has…
White Box Art Channel 