Shaftesbury in Dorset is our latest location on our summer motorhome tour. Shaftesbury – famous for the much photographed Gold Hill. Probably remembered for the scene in the 1967 Far From The Madding Crowd where numerous terrified actors trotted down the wet cobbles on horseback. Ridley Scott’s iconic 1973 TV commercial for Hovis, though, known…
School Prints and my September Painting of the Month
School Prints was a scheme stated in the middle of the twentieth century whereby artists were commissioned for works from which prints were subsequently given to schools. The scheme fell out of favour with the changes in education policy in the seventies. However the Hepworth Wakefield revived the idea in 2018 with a five year…
Another visit to Fotheringhay and its Royal History
We are back at Fotheringhay in Northamptonshire, where I wrote the post below in July 2018. This time I wanted to look at the painted pulpit given to the church by Edward IV in around 1475. I am becoming interested in English painted panels of this period. July 2018 post Sandy Denny, while with Fairport…
Sutton Hoo and an Anglo Saxon Ship Burial
Sutton Hoo, on the east coast of Suffolk high above the River Deben estuary must be one of the most important and fascinating archaeological sites in Britain. Our visit was one of the highlights of our East Anglian adventure. The site is mainly one of archaeological interest rather than art history as the gold, silver…
Impressionist Masters and a day out at The Fitzwilliam in Cambridge
The Fitzwilliam Museum and Art Gallery is not a regular haunt for me as Cambridge never seems an easy place to either get to or park. However we went there last week on our trip to East Anglia and were well rewarded. The Museum with its magnificent classical front, is set out mainly on two…
Knife Angel visits Chelmsford’s Central Park in September
Hereford Cathedral was the location for Alfie Bradley’s awesome sculpture constructed at the British Ironwork Centre at Oswestry, and a few of you commented on it. My latest header features a view of the sculpture. Chelmsford is the next location and it will stand in the City’s Central Park in September. The Knife Angel is…
Stanhope Forbes tale of life in the Cornish fishing industry: July painting of the month.
Summer Holiday over and time to look at paintings again. My July “Painting of the Month” has a flavour of the sea to celebrate our recent camping holiday by the beach. A Fish Sale on a Cornish Beach, (1884-5) by Stanhope Forbes, is owned by the Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery, and is one…
A Day Out with the Contemporary Treasures of Hereford Cathedral
Hereford is someway off the main tourist routes in Britain, but those intrepid enough to discover the city, will be richly rewarded, especially in the vicinity around the cathedral. Our visit last week was not our first and we skipped the two great attractions on this occasion. The Mappa Mundi is one of the great…
Barbara Hepworth and the Rhythms of the Stones at Wakefield
Barbara Hepworth invited the composer, Priaulx Rainier, to her studio at St Ives in 1950. While there, Rainier introduced Hepworth to Igor Stravinsky’s The Poetics of Music, of which the artist wrote “His (Stravinsky’s) chapter on composition corresponds so exactly to the creation of form that a mere half a dozen words would need to…
George Underwood paints mythically inspired figures and rock album covers
Music and art has been my theme this month, which brings me to George Underwood and his current exhibition at The Fosse Gallery at Stow on the Wold. Underwood is one of those interesting characters who grew up in sixties Britain. Born in 1947 he went to school in Bromley with the likes of David…
