Category: Photographs

#1194 the oldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, PhotographsLeave a comment

I picked up this postcard at The Archaeology Museum (Acropolis)  of Athens in early autumn.

I’ve added the heart because it has become a favourite image. A girl standing with her dad.

I am fairly certain I don’t have a similar image of myself with my dad. Not for any estrangement or complex family dynamics, but because in our family my dad was the photographer and therefore never in pictures.

This is an almost unimaginable concept in a world where smartphones allow everyone to be a photographer.

In our spare room there is a big blue Ikea bag of family albums to be gone through before I put them back up in the roof. I can’t say I hold out much hope of finding a father-daughter picture   of us together until I was in my teens.

In pondering and googling this thought I found a really interesting article which I have shared below.

https://www.itstartswithadam.com/blog/what-smartphones-have-done-to-photography-and-our-capacity-to-look#:~:text=Smartphones%20have%20made%20photographs%20fluid,does%20the%20remembering%20for%20us

And just like that I have found a long form blog about artiness that I really enjoy. I like New World art writing for the same reason that New World wines are so interesting. No snobbishness, less entitled twattery.

Pondering and googling and a day walking in the sun.

It makes me think and that is always a good thing.

#754 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Photographs, Serendipity1 Comment

I love a mirror selfie. The one above was entirely accidental. I was photographing a card design on my workbench and accidentally flipped to the actual selfie mode and photographed myself in the mirror ball that hangs in the window of my studio. I am the pixelated orange blob in the centre of the mirrorball.

In Venice recently, my feet put in an appearance on an Arnaldo Pomodoro , Sphere Within a Sphere, sculpture. The rest of me is lost in a dark crevice.

And in Dublin I embellished the same sculptors work a year ago

Back in Venice I doubled myself onto an unnamed sculpture by Anish Kapoor.

Yesterday I had to remove myself from my own painting to include it in the blog. Here is the original, a highly glossy resin piece.

I dressed the part to visit a Yayoi Kusama installation in Hong Kong

But most times the reflection is unavoidable. Here I am hanging with Mick, as you do.

Helmut Newton

The serendipity of this blog is that it is two years since the last blog course I attended. The final piece of advice given by my chosen mentor was to put more of myself in the blogs. He absolutely did not mean visually. He wanted to hear my voice in my writing. Any sort of self exposure feels a bit awkward, written or visual but I have tried to take his advice and after two years I am finding the whole thing a bit easier. She says, pulling a quizzical face.

#734 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn fashion, PhotographsLeave a comment

One moment in a busy Rome street led us to a retrospective Exhibition of Helmut Newton’s High Fashion photography.

Helmut Newton (born Helmut Neustädter; 31 October 1920 – 23 January 2004) was a German-Australian photographer. The New York Times described him as a “prolific, widely imitated fashion photographer whose provocative, erotically charged black-and-white photos were a mainstay of Vogue and other publications.

Most of us only glimpse the pages of Vogue but his photographs escaped the rarified pages of Fashion magazines and became iconic images of their eras.

He also photographed icons

Loving art and photography is a funny old habit. Under normal circumstances my head and heart would have looked forward to seeing this exhibition, possibly for many months. As it was we spotted the poster less than 24 hours before we were due to leave Rome. We had to squeeze our visit into the journey from hotel to train station. There was already serendipity built into the exhibition even being there during our visit as it had been scheduled to open during the first dreadful months of Covid, when Italy was particularly affected. The reschedule was our good fortune.

But when serendipity strikes it is always a good idea to grasp it. So even though there was only 1 1/2 hours between the exhibition opening and our train leaving we made the most of our moment.

Next stop Venice.

#376 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Family, PhotographsLeave a comment

@theoldmortuary we are still in some sort of crazy autumnal clear out. Domestically rather satisfying but not exactly blog worthy. One other job today was to find a photograph of my daughter as a four year old artist. Digging around in my digital archive I found some old favourite photographs. The one above was taken at Petersham Nurseries in Surrey. A garden centre that has a wonderful cafe. The next photo is a very superior sheep at The Royal Cornwall Show.

Since a small artist inspired this blog it would be an error to not include some actual art in this random trip through my photographs.

Yayoi Kusama at Victoria Miro Gallery London. These silver balls we’re floating in a pond and were an unexpected surprise. We were actually there to see the work of Grayson Perry.

Another London picture taken whilst I was doing Jury Service in Southwark,this image ticks all the boxes. London bricks and a message that all the miscreants in court would have done well to pay attention to.

And then on to some Spanish bricks and a pigeon posing perfectly.

I think my little cache of favourite pictures could run for two days if we are still in domestic mode tomorrow, but here is the photograph I searched for. A small artist in Montana, 26 years ago.

And her niece in Hong Kong this week.

#163 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, PhotographsLeave a comment
©Angela Bobber

There has been an abrupt cold weather change this week. The sun is out but the temperature is decidedly chilly. Goodness knows what the sea is doing, from a distance in the early evening it appears to be very dark in colour. Closer up during a bobbing session on Wednesday the bay was this gorgeous teal colour. Bobbers can have lively imaginations about the sea creatures they can see when the water looks like this.

This week I’ve started work on a longstanding commission for some paintings of things that are actually in the sea.

My starting point is Mackerel.

Three jolly mackerel posed in the bright sunlight this week.It was so cold they didnt thaw out at all during the half hour posing session. Natural sunlight brought out all the colour on their backs and the subtle iredescence of their bellies.

It must be amazing to sail close to shoals of mackerel. I find them a really beautiful subject to photograph and paint. But being near them alive and swimming must be really special.

For this commission mackerel are going to pose on the fishmongers paper they arrived in. The crumples and creases make some really interesting shapes on a neutral background when lit by sharp morning light.

Enough of fishy posing and pontificating we are nearly at the weekend, we have arrived in April and here the sun is shining. Happy Friday, take care with cunning April Fool jokes, my early morning wake up by Alexa was the first to catch me out this morning. Enjoy the weekend.

#32 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn PhotographsLeave a comment

I have a fascination for empty staircases, this one caught my eye, not particularly because it was empty on this occasion but because some tiny reflected lights appeared to be moving up the stairs. Like small invisible creatures climbing the stairs with hand torches.

Empty staircases often tell a story, this quietly grubby staircase resonated with Dance Music most recently as the unused back staircase of a fabulously glamorous night club housed in a building that has been a pleasure dome since the 1930’s

I love everything about it apart from the smell of old wee. But my imagination of the historic encounters that would have occured on this staircase just a few steps from the dancefloor give it a mingled,musky, secretive vestigia that spans almost a century of pleasure.

Not so these steps to a now unpermitted destination.

Which are the exact opposite of the steps below.

So many permutations of places and directions for the mind to travel. This particular photo is a real life encounter with a scene from one of my recurring dreams. A fine place to end a blog. I have stuff that needs to be done upstairs.

Pandemic Pondering #368

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Music, Nature, Photographs, Serendipity2 Comments

This is the last photograph I took in March 2020 before the first Covid-19 lockdown in Britain. It was mid afternoon at Cotehele and I was recovering from a nasty virus. My last virus as it happens, a welcome benefit of adhering to Covid restrictions is that @theoldmortuary we’ve been virus free for a year now despite doing public facing/touching jobs.

In colour this picture is nothing much. Reeds on a managed flood plain on a typically greige day in the Tamar Valley. What the colour picture would never have shown was the amazing sound that was produced as the wind blew through the reeds. I took the picture just to remind me of that sound. True Whispering Grasses.

Really the original picture was nothing much, just a diary note to remind me of a lovely serendipitous sound on a walk that was being done more out of a sense of necessity and desperation than for pleasure.

I tinkered about with the image altering the contrast and then converted it into black and white.

Ta Da!!

A dull photo has turned into a sound. Not perhaps the gentle sound of whispering grasses, although I can hear them when I look at this with an imagined low volume. If I switch it up to medium volume I hear the interference on a television in the eighties or nineties when the signal was lost. Up a notch again and it is the feedback on a performers mic ( when ever have I felt nostalgic about that piercing scream ) it could also be, currently, two people having different Zoom meetings with their laptops too close together. My final auditory assault from one picture is this.

Imagine sketching it in chalk on an old school blackboard.

I’m fairly certain that last suggestion was not kind. The link below is a gentle salve to give you a good earworm for Friday. The mellifluous Sandy Denny.

Whispering Grass

Pandemic Pondering #167

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Photographs, SerendipityLeave a comment

August was a blast. September is the month of holidays @theoldmortuary, but most importantly it’s the month of more interesting light and textures. This year September will be all texture and no holidays. The angle of the sun both in the mornings and evenings makes everything look a little bit more interesting. Trawling through my photo archive some gorgeous textures popped up. Textures are my references for abstract paintings. I stuck to textures photographed in past September’s to illustrate this blog.

The first one is a lovely Palimpsest photographed in Devonport. It is a traditional paper advert posterboard. I drive past it a lot , you have to catch it at the right time. Seemingly one team rips the old posters off and another one follows up and sticks the new one on. I drove past between the two visits and luckily got this lovely piece of serendipity.

The next two are also in Plymouth, one in a hotel and the other in a restaurant. I’ve stuck them together because that is what I do when I’m trying to work out the way forward in a painting.

Textured inspiration also comes from the preparation of food , another two stuck together, one coffee and one gravy.

A couple of years ago we went to a Jazz Festival in Nafplion in Greece.


https://www.fougaro.gr/

The venue is an Art Centre and was also holding an exhibition of wedding dresses. Not normally something that would attract us , but I am so glad not to have missed it . The textures of the wedding dresses were amazing and deserve a blog on their own but there were also this colourful, textural piece that can brighten up this blog first.

I love the juxtaposition of beautifully crafted metal and plastic flowers.

If I wasn’t sticking to the ‘photographed in September’ rule I could share loads of pictures taken in European Cathedrals of ornate gold leaf work , gem encrusted and beautiful, with plastic flowers in a jam jar, close by,somewhat ruining the aesthetic.

Black and white texture comes from a negative image of a blackboard and plastic wrapped rolls of hay, looking other worldly in the sharp sunlight.

Finally a little pink texture, the Dahlias grow in our garden and the Crochet and cracked paint were an installation at Plymouth Art Weekender a couple of years ago.A city wide art festival held every September.

https://plymouthartweekender.com/

Despite Covid-19 the Art Weekender will be held in Plymouth this September.

Aqua Menthe, Lush Lava, Phantom Blue

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Photographs4 Comments

© Shutterstock
It will be no surprise to regular readers or viewers of the blog that I love a deeply saturated colour almost as much as I love black and white.Any ‘colour of the year’ headline grabs my attention. Coupled with lovely descriptive words Shutterstock have analysed their way to a great trio of colours.
https://www.shutterstock.com/blog/trends/2020-color-trends
Synesthesia is always part of my life, I’ve had to learn to override it but these three colours make my heart and head thrill with their energy.
https://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/syne.html My own collection of images is lacking Aqua Menthe and Phantom Blue but Lush Lava plays a big part. I’ve set myself a side project of finding more of those colours this year.A trawl through my collection earlier today has found these.Lush Lava
Flowers on a memorial bench. Devils Point Plymouth
An image I created to show a curving corridor entrance to a dark room.
Red Currants at Butler’s Cottage
Aqua Menthe
Detail from one of my paintings . From the collection of UltraCardiac
Boat at Port Wrinkle
Nightclub on the Barbican, featuring Jules and Lola
Phantom Blue
The Levellers at Minack Theatre.
Mediterranean Biome at Eden Project
A phone box at Royal William Yard during Illuminate Festival
All three colours in an abstract.The cover picture or frontispiece of this blog is a play on words. The shallow pool is at The Scarlet Hotel, Cornwall. The strip of red simply had to be done. I’ve slightly re- edited it to also be the Endpiece.

Greyscale

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Medical imaging, Paintings, Photographs, Serendipity

Diagnostic imaging was my trade for many years. The majority of modalities in imaging produce pictures in black and white or more correctly in Grey scale. As an artist grey scale has always been my guide when judging my coloured work. A black and white photograph always lets me know if a painting has the balance I am hoping to achieve.

Cookworthy Knapp © theoldmortuary

In photography I often search out a monotone image in the real world.

Petersham Nurseries
https://petershamnurseries.com/

Hugo and Lola have been known to pose in locations that lend themselves to Black and White.

In this case at Dungeness, Britain’s only desert on the Kent coast.

The unusual environment lends itself to greyscale.

All round the coast of Britain, black and white somehow brings peace and silence to an image that could, with colour be garish or over ripe.

Wells-next-the-sea

Gigs at Saltash, Cornwall

Another monotone shot in real life colour.

Retaining walls at Samphire Hoe Country Park. An artificial land mass built from the extracted materials created by the tunneling for the Chanel Tunnel. A Nature Preserve.
http://www.samphirehoe.com/uk/visit-us/

And finally back to Radiography.

A cardiac angiogram of the left coronary artery, the basis of the pattern that heads this blog.

Left coronary artery