Stultifying – now there is a word we do not hear very often but it is the effect a hot July day might have on you, down by the river, just passing the time away unenthusiastically. My friend Geoffrey Smith uses it when describing my choice of painting of the month for July. In a…
Category: Painting of the Month
June Painting of the Month – The Spark is You
When the Venice Biennale opened a year ago who would have foreseen the events to come in the subsequent twelve months. St Marks Square empty, a world in lockdown. And of course we in Britain still have Brexit to resolve. One day all these will be History and we will be back to some of…
Botticelli – Pentecost
Pentecost – it seems so strange celebrating Pentecost and the giving of the Holy Spirit with all our churches closed. Anyway we enjoyed a beautiful service filmed in our local church of St Mary Magdalene, in Adlestrop, complete with a special appearance from Buster the Adlestrop cat. It was a triumph for those who produced…
May Painting of the Month
VE Day (Victory in Europe) celebrates the day, seventy five years ago, that Europe crawled out of the Second World War, as Germany unconditionally surrendered, following Adolf Hitler’s suicide in a Berlin bunker days earlier. We will celebrate the occasion, May 8th, this Friday with a bank holiday. Will it feel any different to Thursday…
Easter Day – St Giles Oxford
Welcome everyone to a very sunny Easter in lockdown. I thought a modern painting might be appropriate. I have always recommended to people to see The Menorah if they are visiting Oxford. Roger Wagner, like Giotto seven hundred years earlier, chose to represent this most Christian of images using contemporary language. The cooling towers, which…
Maha Rukab – Psalm 91
Cooped up in solitary confinement with a cough and sneezes. Bliss. The Galleries, Museums and libraries are all shut.Thought I might send out a few cheerful images over the next few days and weeks. This one from Psalm 91, one of the very beautiful bits of scripture.
March Painting of the Month
Monet’s Rough Sea at Étretat has very evocative feelings for me. His 1883 painting of the cliffs at the Normandy village of Étretat was one of his regular views. Étretat is a place with memories of summer, having visited several times, but the stormy seas reminds me of the current weather with its succession of…
February Painting of the Month
Brexit; now there’s a word you don’t hear very often. Now we have cast ourselves away from Europe I thought I would post an image that evokes memories of starting a journey to a new exciting world,while still having a longing for the old (you may not all agree with this diehard European!) Ford Madox…
Painting of the Month – January
2020, a new decade, maybe an allegory of perfect vision. I thought I might start the new decade with a peer back a hundred years to 1920 and celebrate that great but complicated British artist, Sir Stanley Spencer. My Painting of the month is The Bridge from that year. Spencer brings the excitement of the…
January Painting of the Month
2020, a new decade, maybe an allegory of perfect vision. I thought I might start the new decade with a peer back a hundred years to 1920 and celebrate that great but complicated British artist, Sir Stanley Spencer. My Painting of the month is The Bridge from that year. Spencer brings the excitement of the…
