Exhibitions

I stencilled the pollarded poplars on to the Castlemorton weavings this morning. A bit of experimentation with cloth and colour can be seen on the left. These are drying out. Now I have to add leaves to some of the seasons but Winter (extreme left) is finished. I like that one. These are for the Midlands Textile Forum Exhibition at Craven Arms.

 

Other exhibitions were visited in London on Tuesday in the company of Marie FitzSimmons and Rosie Price. It did not work out quite as planned but we had a very good time. We started out by visiting the Fleming Collection (See here) which is not far from the Royal Academy. This is a gallery devoted to Scottish artists and there was a special exhibition devoted to James Morrison. He is very talented and the landscapes which were dominated by sky were exceptional. No I have never heard of him before and it was only Rosie's acute eye which spotted that this would be worth visiting.  Then we went to the Manet exhibition at teh Royal Academy. Not well hung. There were two enormous rooms with one picture in eahc and lots of smaller rooms with too many pictures in them so you could not get through teh crowds. Also, although he painted the faces in detail, he gave up elsewhere and the hands were just blobs and blotches. Disappointing. Standing around afterwards, Marie said, 'Well are we going to see the other exhibition?' None  of us had heard of George Bellow but, game for anything, we went up to the RA's Sackler Gallery. American1882 to 1925 and a native of New York. There were lots of paintings of New York from prize fights to longshoremen standing around in the cold waiting for work and portraits. Oh the portraits. There is a beauty of his daughter (about 8) with her grandmother and great aunt. And the hands are the hands of two old ladies who have scrubbed their floors for a lifetime.

 

So two excellent exhibitions we did not intend to visit and we were happy. Rosie and I then went to a lecture about Japanese paper and bought books there. Then got on a very crowded train and returned home with very tired feet.