Happy Christmas everyone. My choice this year again evokes the Italian Renaissance. Sandro Botticelli painted The Mystical Nativity around 1500. As well as being a superb piece of art it is also very interesting, telling a somewhat subversive story, for its day, and maybe contributing to the down slide in the artist’s fortunes. When the…
Category: Painting of the Month
Vincent Van Gogh at St Remy (2)
A Wheatfields with Cypresses is my new header. This is another painting which Van Gogh repeated several times in St Remy de Provence, while being treated in the asylum there. It can be seen in the National Gallery in London. We visited the former monastery of St Paul de Mausole, while in St Remy recently….
Vincent Van Gogh and My September painting of the month.
Vincent Van Gogh was a fascinating character and while we think we know him there is always another level to understand. We recently visited St Remy de Provence, where the artist was a virtual prisoner as he was treated for all his problems. My September painting is The Starry Night, an image known to all….
More on Perspective and a trip to Les Baux de Provence.
The Hockney’s Eye exhibition at The Fitzwilliam, which I visited recently has made me think about perspective a little more. It has been acknowledged by artists and art historians alike that Brunelleschi’s vanishing point perspective is flawed. The Renaissance masters such as Masaccio, however, found this tool invaluable for their architectural drawings and their church…
David Hockney and my August Painting of the Month
David Hockney has always been fascinated how perspective works and it’s relation to two dimensional representation. So my August painting of the month celebrates his contribution to modern thinking. It is inspired by my visit to the current exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. This self portrait from 2021 is hung next to Hogarth’s…
White Box Art Channel 