Category: art

#1340 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Box, Serendipity1 Comment

Timing is everything in blogging and life generally.

Who.knows how this blog would have gone had I written it six hours ago.

Trick question. I know exactly how it would have gone. Ranty, is the one word answer.

Life got in the way and the intended blog did not get written. Lucky for you the bobbers also got in the way.

They got my raw and furious rant caused by my second visit to the Beryl Cook Exhibition.

I apologised that they got my arty rant unexpurgated. Anne Bobber commented that they had just got an early version of the blog with more expletives.

My second visit to the exhibition was to see the supporting exhibition. Videos, books, newspaper cuttings and private family memorabilia. I was committed to watching all the videos and arrived at opening time because to do that it would be sensible to grab a seat on the solitary sofa.

My ranty pants were enraged by the misogynist questions and attitudes expressed by male television journalists, to a successful woman artist in the 70’s 80’s and early 90’s.  Had I been in the comfort of my own house I would have shouted at the T.V. As it happened In a public space I saved all my grumpiness for when I met the Bobbers and later my Tennis Club friends. On a non ranty note I marvelled at the developments of T.V and broadcast engineering in the last 30 years. Subtitling specifically.

One glorious subtitle blooper that I missed but am almost tempted to sit through the whole hour long broadcast for ran like this.

Beryl and a gay biker friend are off on an adventure on/in a motorbike and sidecar to buy some seafood snacks on the Barbican.  The stall has sold out of Winkles.

The subtitle straddles two sentences and should read

‘ No winkles. Really? Are you kiddingYou wouldn’t ever get that on Old Compton Street’

I realise the wit is lost because I cannot provide an image with the subtitle properly positioned as it would be in 2026.

Old Compton Street used to be the most gay street in London. A heady fug of aftershave and rampant testosterone filled the street with a spirit like no other. Everyone was welcome.

I realise now that it is the lesser known paintings that hold my interest. I am booked to go again next week. This may not be the last you have heard of Beryl.

 

#1329 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn artLeave a comment
Gertrude’s Shoes Beryl Cook @ The Box

Tell us about your favorite pair of shoes, and where they’ve taken you.

Shoes are like children, there are no favourites. Each pair has distinctive and separate identities. Loved for being themselves. That sums up the top tier of my shoe hierachy of needs.

Second and subsequent tiers of shoes are like work colleagues or less close relations. They may ascend to the top tier, but on the whole if they slipped into a bag destined for a Charity Shop  I would not miss them.

The picture above is of the feet of Gertrude Stein and Alice B Tolkas. Painted, as everything is this week, by Beryl Cook. My Grandmother and her sister and friends were just a little younger than Gertrude and Alice.

It could easily be the feet of my Paternal Grandmother and her sister Alice. Between the ages of 2 and 4, I was always puzzled that only my grandmother and her sister or friends wore the same shoes as me.

I have no idea what sort of shoes anyone else wore in the early sixties.

I had a close relationship with my grandmothers shoes because I spent the majority of my time with her under the dining table. She had brought up two children in the second World War, when the safest place for children, during air raids was under the table. She did not update her views on childcare in line with peacetime. Children should be seen but not heard, was elevated to children should not be seen or heard. So under the table I went with a book while she played Scrabble overhead. This was not an unhappy experience at all. But I realise now that it is not ideal.

My grandmother described me as a precocious child when my dad collected me after his work. Because I would read or look at the illustrations of any book on their shelves.

There was nothing else to do..

There may have been an incident when I was slightly older of chewing my grandfathers Old Holborn Tobacco while reading Treasure Island. It could have been worse, there was almost certainly medicinal brandy somewhere in the house.

All rather a thought or two away from favourite shoes but  shoes like these old style Mary Janes accompanied me on my first adventures into a love of reading books. And that has taken me to all sorts of places

#1328 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Box1 Comment
Ivor Dickie(Ladies Night) 1981. Beryl Cook

What is going on here? Despite the talking point of the painting that is not where this question is aimed.

Look at the shadow. An animated and fascinating conversation was going on. At an unnamed ballet school ballet students are taught how to make a safe and secure G- String/ Thong for themselves.

Mind boggling. Where are the measurements taken, what are the tolerances required of the fabric?

Our animated shadow guide then told us that the same ballerina had taught her to pole dance on a convenient scaffold pole in a stable yard.

If only Beryl Cook had witnessed that delicious moment and painted it. Maybe the art establishment would have been less sniffy about her art. Ballerinas and Stables are middle-class subjects and thus acceptable to pompous male opinions. Link below for pomposity.

‘She loved painting people living life out loud’: Why critics scorned Beryl Cook’s ‘saucy’ paintings – BBC Culture

https://share.google/nB0ggI7WAmOd1bk3p

With wide ranging conversations like this is it any great surprise that in a two and a half hour visit we only managed one gallery of the exhibition.

Beryl did get her revenge on one of her male critics.

The chap in the red undies is based on one of her critics’.

#1422 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Drawn to the ValleyLeave a comment
©theoldmortuary

A trio of artists met this morning at our Monthly Creative Table. On a good day we can be thirty people but today just 10% of that number. I always try to doodle a watercolour whilst talking. The sun was out but my head is still very much mired in mud and surface water, a reflection of our current condition after so much rain.

Today’s doodle has a derelict Cornish Engine House, a full moon and waterlogged moorland.

When I do digital art I use 3 or 4 different apps on my phone. The final images are always a combination of techniques from each one. I find it gives me a unique look. Every now and then there is a surprise when an app upgrades its offering.

There is an inevitability that, in upgrading an app some of the features that I love to use have been dropped, in favour of something new. 20 years ago when I was exploring digital photography the loss of a much loved tweakment felt like a friend had left the room. Now I just shrug my photo manipulating shoulders and crack on.

Cubist Cornwall
Post Impressionist Cornwall

Whichever way I look at it there is still a lot of surface water.

#1419 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, SerendipityLeave a comment

Are there any activities or hobbies you’ve outgrown or lost interest in over time?

I think there are many activities and hobbies that have, quite correctly, lost interest in me. The big one would be Radioligy/Radiography. There was a brief flutter of renewed interest in me during Covid but now we are in agreement that making pictures with  X-Rays is in my past. Retirement from a scintillating career. The Physics definition.

On a good day I can be quite the scintillating conversationslist too. She said modestly.

I have kept my transferable skills and transferred them to other things.

Team games were never my thing until I discovered rowing. It was probably the only team sport I had an aptitude for. But we have had an amicable parting of the ways for some time now.

Drawing. Painting. Sketching. Printing. All things that have not given up on me. I was still at school when I realised that sketching a quick cartoon of a teacher was a pathway out of nerdiness and into ‘almost’ cool.

A skill that stayed with me during a long career in the N.H.S. A quick cartoon of an arrogant doctor or an ineffectual colleague handed over at the same time as a handover sheet was better than a hundred tactful words and lightened the mood considerably. I was never caught.

Everyone has worked or studied with a dick or two.

Acting gave me up.

Serious singing and dancing the same,  but lower down on that particular spectrum and I am quite the unqualified success! Art however, we are together for ever.

P S sometimes in the NHS other departments had the same problems with the same characters. There may have been cartoon requests to lift the moods of other beleaguered colleagues.

#1391 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Hong KongLeave a comment

Caught in a shaft of sunlight. My sunlight promise of some sunshine every day in January would not ordinarily feature art. But here I am within an art work by Marta Minujin. Part of a collective of Womens Art that we visited in Hong Kong.

Source: M+ https://share.google/a9cTaA1F0VTjbzHIG

Dream Rooms- Environments by Women also introduced my granddaughter to the work of her Great Grandmothers favourite artist.

Immersion: Judy Chicago, Feather Room (1966) – Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts https://share.google/ywy3no3ovdtqejGG6

Judy Chicago was the thinking woman’s artist in the 60’s and 70’s. Her Dinner Party installation of Dinner plates decorated with Vulva’s was a big talking point in the Sexual Health Clinics of rural Essex.

The Feather Room is a little more accessible for a 7 year old. Not that my blushes were ever spared from the womens chit chat that happened between my mum and her work friends at that time.

I think the Art we experienced in Asia and Australia might push my blogs through February just as the Sunshine from both locations is informing January. And by the time February is over that is Winter done.

Sunshine on a Saturday. It must still be January.

.

#1389 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art1 Comment

It is a good day when some bright colours arrive to join the pencil case gang. I’ve not had a chance to give them a good run out yet . Just a quick check for colour. Not all coloured water colour pencils are created equal. Some like to dominate and others are more timid.

They have all had a gentle first outing  as pale washes of themselves and two have gone in a little stronger. I never know who the dominant personalities  will be with any different  brand or type of art materials. I always create an organic colour chart, just letting them flow over each other or just sit side by side. A deep red called Shiraz, a mustard and Leaf green are the early strong personalities. But who can guess what tomorrow’s tinkering will bring. I am heading to some vibrant places very soon so I need to know who to rely on in vivid corners of the world.

#1373 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn artLeave a comment

I discovered the word raineth last year when I visited an art gallery in Penzance.

The Rain it Raineth Every Day. 1889 Norman Garstin

Shakespeare is credited with the first use of the word.

Raineth absolutely described yesterday. Every outdoor task was served with a side order of precipitation. In the morning, light but penetrating, to-the-bone drizzle. And later in the day, great big plops of the stuff, that seemed to sit on my raincoat in a thick layer of wetmess that then cascaded onto the lower quarter of my trousered legs and boots. Then the fabric of my trousers wicked the water upwards. I was a one woman circular economy of moisture.

Beyond the domestic and the rain I worked on my collage, in the rather pathetic daylight that oozed weakly through the cloud cover.

I sliced up a colour chart made during a course run by-

Source: Tansy Hargan https://share.google/ixUqwAsUBrpLHEmm3

I completely forgot to photograph the colour chart before I chopped it up. It was half of a colour wheel created from a colour mixing  lesson she was teaching. After I had finished it I noticed that  I had almost created a birds head which I embellished for no particular reason. After slicing, I planned to leave the birds head on my cutting room floor because I was creating a cityscape and this is meant to be a wholly abstract collage. But his little beady eye kept looking at me so I wove him in.

Today is another round of sticking and cutting before I create the river, which is another Tansy Hargan test piece. This time I remembered to photograph it before I sliced.

I chose this one because my very wet evening walk  reflected light on cobbles reminded me of this technique of woven collage.

Who knows where the river will take me later today…

#1370 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Firestone Bay1 Comment
Tidal Pool, now you see it now you don’t.

I have been a bit of a ‘natural’ light pedant this weekend. I am creating a woven collage abstract of the tidal pool.

Natural light because I am weaving and colour matching.

Early weaving placement.

Glueing, weaving and moving strips is curiously time consuming.

Close up.

I am slightly obsessed by the colours of the sea in Firestone Bay and the way the rocks and concrete collect lichens and marginal seaweed.

Close up.

I am about a quarter of the way through the sticking and moving process and daylight is in short supply. I am loving this new process . I quite fancy doing something similar as a flower meadow in pastel colours that would be completely out of my comfort zone.

Close up

A project for the spring perhaps?

#1368 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Pandemic ponderings3 Comments
Isolation 2020 ©theoldmortuary

What historical event fascinates you the most?

History in general fascinates me. In many ways it is the imperfection and biased recollection of facts and events that makes history all the more intriguing. Academia strives hard to nail down historical facts. While human memory throughout history differs in subtle and monumental ways. Humans involved or indeed uninvolved in historic events have an opinion on how or why something happened depending on their own prejudices or expectations.

Someone writes or records in some way their viewpoint on an occurrence and that becomes a fact which others might question. And then more research is done and another book/paper/ theory is let loose.

For this reason alone my choice of fascinating historical event is the Covid Pandemic. Because I experienced it first hand and that only 5 years down the line there is swirling abiguity about some of the facts and outcomes of the virus that stopped the world.

My earlier daily blog, Pandemic Ponderings, records the event as it impacted my small space in history. Do I remember things the way they actually were. Would reading them again surprise me?

200 years down the line on 2225 how will  the Covid Pandemic have altered the world?

On reflection my family and friends were relatively lucky and yet we experienced huge grief and sadness. The harm of that period lives on within each of us.

Almost every human in the world felt something similar and many were so much more badly damaged than us. How will all that unhappiness in a whole population have shifted the shape of our world for ever?

Out of bad experiences good things rise, different paths are taken. Enforced choices become the lived experience.

I am capable of swimming every day in the sea, with friends I would never have met had it not been for the Pandemic. I moved house to be next to the sea so swimming was easier and then a whole other, quite bonkers world opened up.

For a whole worldful of people to have a single event that changed them is unprecedented. 

It makes you think, doesn’t it.