Kirchner's Mountain Life

Reading Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's Mountain Life, looking at the landscapes he painted, the photographs. I think it's wonderful. I like this work better than his Berlin and urban night life studies.

The pictures of Nina Hard dancing in his cabin as well are also wonderful. I love the woodcuts, the portraits, all full of human expression. Makes me want to do some woodcut again.

Kirchner went to Davos on a rest cure in 1917. His reaction to the landscape of the mountains and the inhabitants of the area became subjects for his art. He used his expressive brushwork and colour to depict the countryside and the rural life here. He painted these pictures in 1917 - 1926, and he went back to Germany afterwards. He shot himself in 1938 on the eve of the Second World War after the anschluss. His paranoia merged with reality. Poor Kirchner. Poor Erna Kirchner who decided to use the same surname as they were a couple. Funny that they nearly had the same first name. I'm not sure I'd like that.

Jude's Reuters Art Exhibition at Woolfson and Tay

River sketch, on the Lee

Morning in Victoria Park

Drawing in the morning

Stayed on the boat last night after a wonderful, successful theatre show. And drew some pictures of the morning light. It's unbelievably hot at the moment.

Folkestone Triennial

The Mermaid Song film I made with Nick Baxter and Joanna McCormick is being screened on the final weekend of the Folkestone Triennial.

http://host-a-ghost.blogspot.com/2011/09/haunted-sea.html

Art at the Trattoria - sculpture

Thanks to Katja Heber for this photo.

Pencil crayon on the canal 3

Pencil crayon on the canal

pencil crayons

Using my new box of pencil crayons on the road to Ilford

Our upcoming exhibition at the Trattoria Saporia, Newington Green

Lori D.

Enjoying Lori D.'s illustrations. She's based in Portland, Oregon. I have a friend, Rich Pederson who moved back there. It looks a very cool place to live. Her storytelling illustrations are good and inspiring. I like the way she does a big scene, lots of characters, all very clean but simple. Quite folk art / illustration, which I seem to be headed towards too ...

Madrid pictures

At the concert my good friend Sarah Clarke gave me some pix of her trip to the capital of Spain with me this February. We mostly went round art galleries and to cute little cafes. Here's me sketching a Goya etching ...

A boating life for me

The engine's hum - moving the boat, taking some foties and doing some work for entering the Oxford House Open Exhibition. Both Matt and I are to enter - for an adventure! We met and walked down the canal the other day after my work was over, took some pictures. Now we need more! Here's one boat we passed, looks a bit dilapidated - you don't mind me saying that do you, person who owns it? But the willow gives it a lovely air of Gothic decay.

The Foulkestone

Now with added colour - and instruments! And on tartan in honour of the 'Talisman Crew'.

Art Exhibition

I'm going to be talking to a wonderful bookshop, Woolfson and Tay, about having an exhibition in their gallery space, I really hope that you will come. I'm hoping it might be early 2012.

Stanley Spencer

Watching Jon Snow talk about Stanley Spencer and war art on Channel 4. Wonderful. So moving. I love Spencer. Here's a postcard of his Resurrection.

Matt's artwork

Matt has been making some wire sculptures of his studies of line on paper. Beautiful. Here's a taster.

British Museum - prints and drawings - a research visit

Had a fantastic day today, visiting the prints and drawings room at the BM. It's so secret, you have to go behind the Michaelangelo cartoon to get access.

Matt and I spent the morning looking at Stanley William Hayter's etchings. In the afternoon we went through a box of Edouard Vuillard's and a box of Toulouse-Lautrec's lithographs.

After that we say the temporary exhibition of Eric Gill material in Room 69a. A very small exhibition but worth it.

Asemic writing

A while ago I had a go at doing some asemic writing. I did a little series of sheets with staples, hole punch and biro, the kind of materials you find in the stationary cupboard at work. Here's one of the pieces.












The other pieces have gone astray but if I find them I'll post the whole lot, as it's more satisfying to see them within the variety of the sequence.