Present show at The Tavern Gallery, Meldreth : Royston Arts Society
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
17 February
Present show at The Tavern Gallery, Meldreth : Royston Arts Society
It’s unmistakably someone whom you know – they say that people divided as to whether they supported The Stones or The Beatles, but I think that I just happen to know the former less well, so I would have struggled to find the name of Ronnie Wood, but I knew the connection. (Saying that, it’s alleged that people have trouble naming all of the Fab Four straight off: Can you do it?)
Which is not the sine qua non of a good portrait, that it should resemble the person who sat for it, as Picasso [may have] proved, but this one is a striking likeness, and I think that, as with the divide just mentioned, there might be those who dislike the schematic of the colours and textures employed, whereas others will be very pleased with it.
To judge for yourself, it is one of the most obvious works on entering The Tavern Gallery, and be informed that this show welcomes visitors between 10.00 and 4.00 from Wednesday to Sunday, with its last day on Sunday 26 February.
The rest of what I shall share here, in the form of my attempts at producing images of some of the other sixty-three framed works, is almost inevitably my taste, as why would I choose something that I don’t like – OK, that didn’t stop me with my major dislike of
The Future (to which the series of postings
The Future or How do you choose a satisfying film? bear testimony) - when I can enthuse over something that I do? Sorry about that, but the breadth of what is on show (and Val Pettifer, to whom I talked about it there yesterday afternoon, tells me that there are probably around another one hundred unframed works) means that I have to start somewhere, so I have selected a few things as representative of the whole.
So why not start with a figurative piece (which, you will see, has sold)?
Winter Fox by Rosalind Ridley (which was priced at £110), next to which I have dared to place Beth Hardwicke's
Winter Scene after Lu Cheng-Yuan, priced at £95*.
Other than the season, the works, in feel (let alone technique), have nothing in common- which is my point, that there is much to please in the variety of approaches. Moving on, as if promenading through the gallery in Mussorgsky's suite for piano...
I am a sucker for this view towards
Santa Maria Della Salute (which Dennis Langridge has called
The Grand Canal, Venice and put on sale for £70), and I have contrasted its colours with those in
A Solitary Existence by Val Pettifer, which sold at [
price to come].
... And so on to the landscape in watercolour, juxtaposing
The Ouse Washes by Norman Rushton (on sale at £55) with Derek Bunting's
West Highlands, which is £38.
And for a finishing-touch, as I really don't want to say any more, or display further inadequate attempts to capture the spirit of these works (which words can only hint at),
View through Crumbling Cottage by Caroline Fookes for £75, and which very much puts me in mind of the artistic interests of a painter friend of mine.
End-notes
* I do apologize for the lack of quality in the images that I have made of Beth and Rosalind's images (and of those that follow), but it is down partly to trying to avoid unwelcome reflection, but largely to the inadequacy of the photographic device (a camera on a phone) - the aim is to give an idea of what is on offer to see, not to substitute for going to Meldreth.
