Midday stroll

A glorious, sunny, winter's day and Jephson Gardens looked beautiful

red berries everywhere

looking at South Town from the bridge

the swans and ducks enjoying the sunshine

the bare branches turning gold in the sun

the park seen through the water of the fountain

again

and again

more berries

and more

Losing Lucian

Losing Lucian: Dead Dad - Paintings from Lucian Freud's Death Bed, by David Freud, at the Meller Merceux gallery in Oxford.

We stumbled upon this fairly new gallery purely by chance and what drew us inside was this picture in the window.

It is part of the 'Stone Impressions'  series: using stones collected from beaches near his home in West Sussex, David Freud impresses textured reliefs into card and canvas panels by striking them by hand and with a mediating hammer.

In some cases the card is placed on tar macadam or a jetty, such that it picks up shards of bitumen or the contours of the wood grain.

The tools for the Stone Impressions.

There were also other works in oils, watercolours and ink.

While growing up David Freud had no contact with his father. It was only when he grew up that he gradually made attempts at getting in touch - even after contact had been made, communication remained sporadic and connection with Lucian unstable. It was only after his father's death that many of the complex emotions surrounding his family situation, both positive and negative became prominent.

An unfinished World

An Unfinished World, works on paper by Graham Sutherland, curated by George Shaw at Modern Art, Oxford.

Sutherland's early Pembrokeshire landscapes from the 1930s and 1940s created during his time as official WWII artist: they are far from traditional studies of landscape and environment, they exude a world that is as dark as it is magical.

West Landscape, 1936

Interlocking Tree Form, 1943

The Thorntree, 1946

Thorn Head, 1945

Trees under Mynedd Pen Cyrm, 1939.

George Shaw described them as  'a lament to the passing and changing landscape, a monument to the earth itself'.

Seas of Grass

Seas of Grass, textile landscapes and paintings by Michala Gyetval in the Herbert Art Gallery in Coventry.

Gyetval paints and sculpts with threads, stitching and layering her images in a variety of materials and employing hand and machine techniques. She twists fibres and uses thick wool, crocheted cotton and fine silks to create an undulating relief, moulding the shapes of trees in a sculptural manner. Kenilworth is the location for much of her subject matter.

Sea of Grass  (Acrylic and pastel on paper)

Sea of Grass (Thread and fibres on felted wool blanket)

Oak Tree  (Pen and ink on paper)

The Magic Oak Tree  (Acrylic and pastel on paper)

The Magic Oak Tree (Thread and fibres on felted wool blanket)

Trees at Ashow  (Oil pastel on paper)

Trees at Ashow (Thread and fibres on felted wool blanket)

Wave (Oil pastel on paper)

Deep in the Forest Study (Oil pastel on paper)

Deep in the Woods (Thread and fibres on felted wool blanket)

Olive Grove  (Thread and fibres on felted wool blanket)

August in Provence Study (Acrylic and pastel on paper)

Abbey Fields  (Thread and fibres on felted wool blanket)

The Four Seasons:

Spring  (Thread and fibres on felted wool blanket)

Summer  (Thread and fibres on felted wool blanket)

Autumn  (Threads and fibres on felted wool blanket)

Winter  (Threads and fibres on felted wool blanket).

I Woz Ere

The George Shaw exhibition at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in Coventry.

Paintings based on photographs of the Tile Hill housing estate in Coventry where he grew up. Places that people who know the area recognise, places that are familiar and yet unnerving. The paintings are atmospheric and at the same time jarring, where the mundane is rendered mysterious, where beauty exists in the mundane - the use of Humbrol enamels enhances this and gives them an unsettling resonance. And their glassy textures glow: "It's that glow that you only see when you are walking alone from the pub. That solitary glow, the glow from a telly through a window or streetlights reflected on rain on the streets".

A painter of everyday life and yet his paintings are devoid of human life. "To me they are teeming with human presences. The people I grew up with, family, passers-by, they are all in there somewhere, embedded in the paintings". Are the decaying landscapes a sign of a broken Britain, where the dream of post war living has ended in sink estates? Or a record "of the mundane, the quotidian and the overlooked"?

Wednesday Week, (from Scenes from the Passion series), 2003

The New Star, (Scenes from the Passion), 1998

The Library, (Scenes from the Passion), 1997

Detail of Untitled, 2010

Young Lovers Don't, 2010

Hometime, (Scenes from the Passion), 1999

The Fall, (Scenes from the Passion), 1999

The More Deceived, 2006

The Gap, (Scenes from the Passion), 1998

The Anniversary, (Scenes from the Passion), 2004

The Garages, (Scenes from the Passion), 1997

While No One was Looking, 2010.


"It was - there's no other way to put it - a nice place to grow up. A post-war council estate on the edge of Coventry, with trees, grass and loads of woodland just beyond. The last built-up area before the countryside took over. I don't think it has ever left me, that sense of possibility and familiarity and possible danger lurking out there somewhere beyond. I haunted the place and how it haunts me".