This month has been an exciting and unusual one.
Unexpectedly I had a quick break from my home painting and decorating activities and spent a day in London visiting the National Gallery to see the “Inventing Impressionism” exhibition. It was well worth the trip. For me, it was the best collection of such works that I have ever seen in one place, mainly because it featured many exhibits from the USA and Europe plus some from Tokyo, which I shall never have the opportunity to view again. I particularly enjoyed some of the magnificent landscapes by Monet, Pissarro and Sisley even though the viewing conditions in the basement of the Sainsbury Wing were as always congested, stuffy and dingy! Fortunately the quality of the paintings more than made up for this. The show is on until the end of the month and I thoroughly recommend it to anyone reading this blog.
I then made my way along the road to the Royal Opera Arcade Gallery in Pall Mall and saw a fine exhibition of work by Carol Owen MBE who like the impressionists has a fascination with the effects of light and paints in a similar style. I had never seen her work before and, judging by the number of sales achieved, her paintings are clearly in demand, which is hardly surprising as they really are very good.
Coinciding with all this I was approached on the very same day by another art gallery in London which was interested in showing my work but unfortunately, after a brief exchange of emails, it transpired that their conditions for showing in the gallery were unacceptable. Although slightly disappointed, I am not willing to exhibit on a basis which I considered to be too one sided with them carrying no risk at all.
In the world of the super rich, the Art Market has reached new levels of lunacy this month with crazy prices being paid at a Christies Auction House in New York for paintings by Picasso , Rothko and other big names of the twentieth century. To some extent I can understand the $179 million bid for Picasso’s “Women of Algiers” but I never have and never will understand how anyone would want to pay millions of dollars for Marks Rothko’s drab daubs which to me have no thought, creativity, originality or skill involved in their production. I first saw his work, a room full of large maroon canvases at the Tate Britain in the 1970’s and, to this day, my views on him and his output have never changed. Here’s one of my abstracts which I would put alongside an image of one of his but, for reasons of copyright, I am unable to show it!
As this is an “Art and Music” website and I don’t often mention music, I should also say that our son is in a Folk/Rock band, Galley Beggar, and towards the end of last year the band signed a recording and publishing deal. On 5th May their first album with Rise Above Records “Silence and Tears” was released in the UK and , so far the reviews, have been very encouraging. We don’t yet know what the future will bring but the signs are that, in its field, the songs, mostly original, apart from three with traditional lyrics, will become popular in their particular genre.