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…
The Herbert Gallery, Coventry: 2 Tone – Lives and Legacies. A celebration of Coventry’s multicultural ska music
Coventry and it’s old medieval centre is hauntingly beautiful. When I recently visited, there was a Reconciliation event in the old ruins of St Michael’s Cathedral comprising young trees and recorded experiences played through loudspeakers. The old gothic church was bombed in a firestorm on 14th November 1940. Instead of a hatred for the perpetrators…