Top Tips for Cambridge Drawing Society's Autumn Show, which finishes on Saturday 30 October 2021

The Agent's Top Tips for Cambridge Drawing Society's Autumn Show (on till Saturday 30 October)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

29 October

The Agent's Top Tips for Cambridge Drawing Society's Autumn Show, currently on at The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, but finishing at 4.00 p.m. on Saturday 30 October 2021

In what follows, a figure in bold face denotes the numbered screen on which each work is hanging (unless preceded by a 'W', for 'Wall' - in the main exhibition space) ; the standard of work is generally very high, but the factor on which an item appears here is based, trying to look at every work on show, on listing those that ought to stand the test of time, by being looked at anew each time in The Agent's eyes, rather than delivering one, however impressive, bundle of impressions on first being viewed.


Highly commended, including Best in show (as voted by #UCFF), in alphabetical order (of title) :

• 22 : A Breath of Fresh Air ~ Sue Walker

• 30 : A New Day ~ Ann Massing

• 86 : Autumn Trees ~ Cathy Parker

• 86 : Birch Woods ~ Cathy Parker

• 66 (?) : Blue Composition (?) ~ Christine Lockwood

• 60 : Byron's Pool ~ Katy Bailey

• 33 : Cherries ~ Rachel Haynes

• 55 : Chicken ~ Svetlana Baibekova

• 4 : Dandelions in a Jam Jar ~ Carol Whitehouse

• 20 : Ethel ~ Sara Woodall

• 39 : Green Cavern ~ Maggie Ecclestone

• 84 : Harbour Lights Honfleur ~ Vivienne Machell

• 39 : Joseph's Rock ~ Maggie Ecclestone

• W2 : Landscape No. 1 : Complications ~ Christine Lafon

• 59 : Mow Fen XVIII ~ Iona Howard

• 91 : Myrtle ~ Yvonne Jerrold

• 72 : On The Level ~ Janet Gammans

• 25 : The Pond ~ Mary Seymour

• 72 : Silent Fen ~ Janet Gammans

• 3 : Snow Berries and Rosehips ~ Carol Whitehouse

• 36 : Stare ~ Rob Jones

• 8 : Strawberries ~ Lydumila Sikhosana

• 28 : Tied Up ~ Alan Noyes

• 2 : Trinity Lane, Cambridge ~ Yang Yuxin

• 10 : Winter Hillside, Islay ~ Jill Ogilvy




Also mentioned in dispatches (likewise in alphabetical order (of title)) :

• 39 : Arthur's Cave~ Maggie Ecclestone

• 91 : Big Little Owl ~ Yvonne Jerrold

• W3 : Blizzard ~ Ann Gascoine

• 60 : Brancaster Staithe ~ Dan Walmsley

• 71 : Channel Island Porcelain ~ Bill Everett

• W3 : Fleam Dyke, Springtime ~ Hatty Richmond

• 31 : Frozen in Time I ~ Liz Hales

• 15 : King's Cross ~ Willy (Willie ?) Wilson

• 49 : Long Shadows ~ Caroline Furlong

• 60 : Looming ~ Katy Bailey

• 10 : Mountain Stream ~ Jill Ogilvy

• W3 : Dr. Pat Owens ~ John Glover

• 32 : Rosy Glow ~ Chris Lockwood

• 6 : Shoreline ~ Elaine Purcell

• 30 : Silver Sunset ~ Ann Massing

• 50 : The Staithe ~ Alan Noyes

• 55 : Vietnam ~ Svetlana Baibekova




Also ran :

• 86 : Paul Edwards appears to like Bridget Riley's Hesitate (19??) [and, perhaps, her Fall (1963)] enough to meld his style with hers by way of pastiche

• 80 – 81 : In his turn, Geoff Goddard looks to like Gerhard Richter's photo-realism and also the style of his model – 4 x variants



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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

At Cambridge Drawing Society : Some that caught the eye - and looked likely to linger on longer looking

Cambridge Drawing Society : What caught the eye* - and would linger much longer

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

28 October

At Cambridge Drawing Society : Some that caught the eye* - and looked likely to linger on longer looking

In (except in one case) order of finding (the names of artists new to #UCFF's active consciousness are underlined - those are not links, whereas CDS, after a name, should take you - where one exists - to that member's entry in the list of members) :


* Valerie Pettifer CDS ~ Heavenly Vision (£350) [archive images at Present show at The Tavern Gallery, Meldreth : Royston Arts Society]

* Andy Dakin CDS ~ Lisa, Unportrait (540) + [hung elsewhere] Emily III (£320)

* Louise Riley-Smith CDS ~ Teacup (£295)

* Yuxin Yang CDS ~ Hills Road, Impression (£90)

* Dan Walmsley CDS ~ Daymer Bay, Cornwall (£450)

* Lyudmila Sikhosana ~ Dusk at the Meadow (£280)

* Francesca Gagni CDS ~ Stardust II (£325)

* Sue Eaton CDS ~ Inky Waters (£290)

* Yvonne Jerrold CDS ~ Zoe (£285)

* Cathy Parker CDS ~ Vineyard II (£290)

* Melanie Collins ~ Earth (£300)

* Surinder Beerh ~ Boat Yard (£150)

* Lee Browne ~ Summer, Waresley Wood (£95)

* Svetlana Baibekova ~ Composition I (£125) [archive images at Svetlana steals the show]



End-notes :

* For once, not a list with thirteen items... However, three or four titles that have a comma ?


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

The motto of Cambridge Drawing Society

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

15 May 2012

It would be much funnier to have a Drawling Society, where you could hear a good Jimmy Stewart or even Tom Hanks (as a modern-style Drawler), but we have what we have.

A few things puzzle me about its recent publicity material:

* It begins by saying 'Art Exhibition / At the Guildhall / Cambridge Drawing Society / 1882 - 2008', but I cannot construe the dates, which appear to suggest that the Society has been disbanded several years earlier: overleaf, we are told, no more helpfully, that members 'are proud to maintain the century-long tradition of annual exhibitions in Cambridge'*

* The motto of the Society (at the top of that side) is given as Nulla dies sine linea

* Even if one could misconstrue dies as in apposition to lives**, not as a Latin word that is probably best known from Carpe diem (a phrase re-energed by that otherwise regrettable vehicle for the largely regrettable Robin Williams), it is clear enough what it means

* So to render it Draw a line every day oddly turns it into an instruction, when the Latin is clearly a statement, and, to my mind wrongly, focuses attention on the act of drawing, whereas the sentiment is one about time and of maintaining a habit, day to day, and one has to infer that line is to be made***

* The flyer directs us to Apelles, quoting a story about him that, maybe, I searched long enough to find, but hiding behind pictures in his shop-window to hear comments from passers-by, amongst the many anecdotes and accounts of him and his great technical skill (as no work of his survives the intervening 23 centuries (and we do not know definitely, except by reference to his having been said to be at the court of Philip of Macedon, when he lived), does not seem the best to have chosen to illustrate the motto****

* It seems that Pliny who is the so-called Elder is a major source for knowledge and appreciation of the abilities of Apelles, since we cannot see them displayed in any work: writing around the time of Christ, he would have spoken Latin, but I doubt that the motto, if authentic, would have been in anything other than Greek originally (Apelles is said to have been from the Greek island of Kos)

* It, too, expands the text, but what the Wikipedia® entry gives as a translation is, all in all, more accurate: Not a day without a line drawn


You never know, it could also apply to blog postings!



End-notes

* Actually, for what it is worth, I overlooked this comment: The first public exhibition took place in 1906 in the old Guildhall.

** As one teacher of English was said to have done with the Beckettt title Malone Dies.

*** The Wikipedia® entry goes into detail about a cobbler, one of whose comments (about how a shoe had been painted) Apelles heeded and remedied the mistakes, but whose subsequent comment about a leg earnt him a rude and surprising rebuff from the hidden painter.

**** Not least not to introduce, as if in a non-sequitur, the observation that visitors can write comments in a book, and vote for their favourite picture


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