Paintings
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Flamenco – Sacromonte
There appears to be a debate – heated at times – as to where flamenco music and dance originated. One of the early places where flamenco was to be found in the caves of Sacramonte near Granada, where the gypsies lived. These days those caves have been sanitised and host nightly flamenco shows for tourists,…
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Wild Flowers – Wisley
The Royal Horticultural Society Garden at Wisley seems to have gone big on wild flowers this year. Of course there are still lots of formal gardens, exotic plants, hard-to-keep-alive plants in rude health and immaculate lawns, but here and there a riot of multicoloured mayhem has been encouraged to happen, kept in order only by…
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Sundial
Sundials work better on some days than others. This one in the gardens at Polesden Lacey was working on the day that we saw it, for the simple reason that the sun was shining. Curiously however it was not quite showing the correct time – even after making allowance for the fact that our watches…
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Monte dei Paschi di Siena
Around about a decade ago, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena was attracting more publicity than the bank probably wanted, mainly due to problems they were having at the time with bad loans and losses. This general view of the bank’s historic headquarters accompanied many of the press articles at the time, but in the…
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Murano Glass
The island of Murano is of course famous for producing stylish glassware, a lot of which seems to find its way into the tourist shops of nearby Venice. This particular vase was actually purchased on Burano, another island in the lagoon which is not geographically very far from Venice, but which is (to borrow Hardy’s…
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Murano – Canale San Donato
Venice is lovely, but quite intense. The nearby islands of Murano and Burano offer a respite of calm – both the building and the tourist density on these islands is noticeably lower than the slightly misnamed “Serenissima”. This painting is fairly faithful to the photo that I took during our visit to Murano, in that…
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Fünf Höfe, Munich
I was rather taken with the greenery hanging from the ceiling, and indeed with the view and colours of the whole space. I suspect that I was supposed instead to have been taken by the range of shops, but getting me interested in shopping is not easy, as my wife will readily attest! I think…
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Post Pruning
On one level, this is simply a painting of the consequences of a common horticultural procedure – a fresh bud squeezing out from a severely trimmed stump. At a more metaphorical level however, this image seems a bit too personal to spell out in more detail … As regards the artwork – the pen did…
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Stupas at Wat Xieng Thong
Stupas are to be found in most countries in South East Asia. Many of these structures, like those in this painting, are near to Buddhist temples. I have heard varying explanations as to what these stupas are for, ranging from their being repositories for sacred relics through to just being simple memorial stones. In truth…
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Chair, Pouffe and Plant
Many of my recent watercolour paintings have actually been a combination of watercolour and pen. So I decided to try a simple watercolour-only painting, and these three objects were right in front of me at the time! As you will be able to see, some aspects of this painting worked out well, others less so.…
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Roadside Banana
I have had a banana plant growing indoors in a pot for well over twenty years. Although it has continued to produce new leaves, in all that time it has only managed to grow to about half a metre in height! By contrast, throughout South-East Asia we saw these plants grown to many metres in…
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Robinia Tree
This tree sits in front of our house, and whilst I often notice and appreciate its bright green / yellow foliage it doesn’t normally stand out from the surroundings. However, the other day when I saw it standing nonchalantly in front of some rather dark and angry storm clouds, I was rather taken by the…
Doodling ... 