Doings

So in brief: we went to the Tirzah Garwood exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery - interesting, since we'd seen the Eric Ravilious (her husband) exhibition there some years ago and I've read her memoir.

Her art was very varied. 

and in various media.

I had a lovely visit to a school friend's house, and met her partner. M and I were never particularly close at school but we were friendly, and I always liked her. It's been so nice to reconnect. 

And then we came home and Littlest Granddaughter also came (to her) home and reconnected with her guinea pigs, which we had managed to keep fed and watered. 

Apart from that, it's been a flowery time. These mecanopsis were at Branklyn Gardens in Perth, which we always like to visit. 

And we met up with a very old friend, also M, and went to Little Sparta, about an hour's drive away, which is the garden of poet and artist Ian Hamilton Finlay. We've been meaning to go for ages, and when M - who lives in London - said that she would like to visit it, that was the spur for us to take her. M's mother and mine were friends in London during the war, specifically during the Blitz, and her mother was my mother's bridesmaid. 

It's a very pleasant garden

with various art installations and inscriptions, some rather mysterious. 

And then, at home, all is very floriferous.

A neighbour (whose front garden is mainly paved, with some neatly trimmed small bushes) said to me yesterday that she liked the wild effect of my garden. 

I know what she meant, but it takes a lot of work to achieve such a wild effect. 

And that's me just about caught up with our doings, though frankly I don't really know why I do this...
 

Art and things

Dear old Blogger has been doing some odd things recently, but today it will at least allow me to add photos - though not in the right order. Still, let's not look a gift horse, etc. 

So here's a photo of some nice Edinburgh weather, when I went up town to look at an exhibition of pictures which are at the bottom of this post. 

I've started my rainbowish quilt and have now completed the red row (which is now twice this length). The cutting-out messed with my head a bit at first but I think I'm now familiar with it. Famous last...

Yesterday Mr L was a bit under the weather with a bad cold, so I went alone by train to visit Son and family. Above, you'll see the sun setting on the way back over the bridge.

Here's Medium Granddaughter on a trapeze - and this might (or might not) be Small Grandson running back to queue up for another go. I think it's not actually him but another boy of similar size - but you get the idea. 

And this is the view from the bridge on the way to visiting them - in reverse order. 

But I don't suppose it matters.

It was a lovely day. 

Here are some watercolours that I really liked at the exhibition that I went to on my own earlier in the week. Mr L didn't come because of his cold. I'd have any of these on my wall: some pleasing birds and flowers here. 

Talking of cold - brrr. I like the shadows and the tracery of the branches. 

I really like the shadows on this one too, and the interesting angle. I'd love to own this. 

And these colours would look good on a quilt, don't you think? 

I don't know who painted any of them because I didn't buy a catalogue. 

There's an exhibition of Turner watercolours on at the moment in the same gallery, with a queue of over 2 hours to get in. I like Turner well enough - some of his paintings are a bit misty for my taste - but it was great just to walk past that queue and go to this exhibition instead. 

And that was my week. In reverse. 

Faster than fairies

Last week we took the train over the bridge to Kirkcaldy (pronounced Kir-coddy) to see the Jack Vettriano exhibition at the art gallery there. I don't know if Vettriano is famous abroad, or even in England, but he's quite famous in Scotland, being from Kirkcaldy. He's self-taught, and the art establishment tends to look down on him (one gathers) - maybe because of that but also because it doesn't consider his paintings as having artistic merit. Also, the subjects are a little bit sinister sometimes, and very much suggest a rather shady story behind the pictures. He always paints from photos, never from life, and sells his paintings for lots of money. Anyway, it was very interesting. 

He taught himself to paint by copying postcards and also prints from auction catalogues. Above is the real Monet; below is his version. 

Sometimes he changed them a bit. 

After a while he developed his own style and sold two paintings at the Summer Exhibition, after which he applied to Edinburgh Art College and was rejected because his "portfolio does not meet the standard". So he just went on painting. 

This is a very famous one of his - "The Singing Butler" - though it's not clear to me that the butler actually is singing. A lot of his paintings are of people in formal clothes - though sometimes he paints women who're more scantily clothed.

This one is "A Date with Fate". 

This one is "Live Art Show". 

I wouldn't actually want any of his paintings on my walls - they make me feel uneasy - but they seem good to me. Though what would I know? 

There was a little film about him, in which he says that for him, narrative is essential in painting. You can definitely see that in his work.

And then we had a little walk around Kirkcaldy, past this old milestone, saying that Dysart is 2 and three-eights miles from there. Very precise! My great-great-grandparents lived in Dysart, and their son, my great-grandfather, was apprenticed to a house-painter in Kirkcaldy. We have Great-Grandpa's indentures from 1869. Sadly, he died at 40, but not before fathering 8 children, 7 of whom survived him. I can't imagine how his widow managed. 

Then we walked down George Street, where Mr L lived for a while as a boy. 

And yesterday we were back across the bridge, this time by car, to visit Son and family. 

Which was lovely. The children are adorable; I wish we saw more of them but... it is what it is - as people tend to say these days. 

 

And so the days rush relentlessly on. 

Orange

My brother and sister-in-law came to stay for a few days and we had a little at-home holiday with them. We went to the Victoria Crowe exhibition at the City Art Centre, which we all enjoyed. The quality of light in her paintings is very striking but doesn't come across well in a photo, especially as I usually had to take it from the side to avoid the worst of the glare.

She's very good on trees.

Sunset light on snow. I love this.

Another day we walked round Saughton Park. I don't like orange, even in flowers, but I have to admit that the combination of reddish-orange and white looks good here. (No orange flowers are allowed in my garden, though.)

Beautiful vistas.

And some rather successful wild flower planting.

Then we had a stroll round the grounds of Lauriston Castle. You wouldn't think you were in a city, would you? Here you can see over the water to Fife on the other side.

Lovely lupins, with nary a lupin aphid on them. Unlike mine.

We wandered round the Japanese garden, a gift from Kyoto.

Thank you, Kyoto.

It's much appreciated.

Then today they went away and then the sun came out. See, no orange in my garden.

Scottish people, including some women

Goodness, I now feel rather embarrassed, as if my previous post was saying that I was going to go away unless lots of people told me that they loved me. That's not what I meant at all. But thank you so much to those who said they'd miss my meanderings. It's given me food for thought! 

On Saturday we were at a surprise 70th birthday party for one of the friends of our youth. Here you can sort of see her at the door, having been handed some flowers and going "Argh!" as she sees us all standing there and bursting into "Happy Birthday". It was really lovely to see her (she lives some distance away) and the others of our local group of (once) young people who had reassembled from various parts, two of them from 400 miles away in the south of England.

Today was cold and drizzly so I took myself to the Portrait Gallery to have a wander around. They have an exhibition called "Scottish Heroes and Heroines" or something of the sort. It was good that women were included. It's about time! Here's Thomas Carlyle, looking very pleased with himself.

This is Flora Stevenson, about whom I knew nothing except that there's a primary school named after her. It turns out that she was the first woman elected to a school board after the 1872 Education (Scotland) Act, which made primary education mandatory (good) but said it had to be exclusively in English, not Gaelic - which led to a major decline in Gaelic speaking (bad). Not that Gaelic was ever spoken widely as far south as this. Anyway, this wasn't Flora's fault. She was then the first woman to chair the Edinburgh School Board and did lots of other voluntary and worthwhile stuff.

I love this: the notice beside the painting of David Roberts (1796-1864) by Robert Scott Lauder says that he's in his traveller's disguise, "worn to look inconspicuous"! It was probably true when he was travelling in the Middle East but he rather fancies himself in it, don't you think?.

Here's James Boswell. I've read so much of his diary writings in the past few years: his Edinburgh diaries, his London diaries and his account of his journey to the Hebrides with Dr Johnson. I've also read Dr Johnson's own account. I like this portrait of the young James, looking - suspiciously? calculatingly? sadly? guiltily? (he had quite a bit to feel guilty about) - at the painter. He didn't know at that point how famous he was going to become. I wonder if he would have been surprised to find himself there.

And look at poor John Runciman in his self-portrait - he'd been bullied by a jealous painting rival, destroyed most of his work and then died of TB at the age of 24. So sad! This is one of the few of his paintings to survive.

On the way out, I said hello to Robert Burns, who probably didn't look like this at all (there are no portraits of him from his lifetime), and who would also have been surprised, I imagine, to see this statue with its wreaths celebrating the recent Burns Night.

See? A totally grandchildless post.

(Ooh, there's a fox barking outside the study window. This has happened a lot recently. Can it be the mating season already? Bit chilly, I'd have thought. (Have just Googled it, and yes, it's the start of the mating season.))