Our long weekend in London 27th - 31st Jan. was great, we stayed with our daughter and saw the following exhibitions:
Whitechapel - Zarina Bhimj; exceptional, Rothko archive; really interesting
British Museum - Grayson Perry; absolutely brilliant, plus a trawl of the Asian galleries to tune in, in readiness for our imminent trip to China.
Royal Academy - Hockney; some really interesting work and some not so, his observation of colour in the field is exceptionally well observed and it was a priviledge to see his sketch books.
National Gallery - shame on you for not opening late every night of the week to enable more people to see the Leonardo show for which Pete got to the queue at 8 am and still couldn't get tickets. Since when was art so popular in this country?
We also popped in to the always welcoming Curwen Gallery for a quick look at their current print show.
I continue to make drawings exploring current ideas of loss, the seasons etc; see previous entries for a fuller explanation. I think the first two paintings are completed because there is nothing more I can do to them but they are not completely satisfactory; they have been useful catalysts for the next versions and will probably serve as experimental starters rather than paintings to show, but I reserve the right to change my mind about this.
A poor image of the first pastel drawing completed, with various stages of development shown above
I will discuss the properties of the various media I have used to express my ideas and the problems they pose in a later post.
