Art Adventures

  Bela Kolarova ' Swatch of Snap Fasteners 11'

 Josef Albers 'Homage to the square:post autumn'

 Lygia Clark 'Red Matchboxes'

Klara Liden 'Untitled (Poster Painting)'

 My first week  since finishing work has mainly been spent sorting out finances and paperwork  with  visit of estate agent to value property and beginning to sort out my stuff for retreat next week at Rydal.  But yesterday was my first expedition up to town to visit art galleries during the working week ( first of many  I hope).  The current Whitechapel Gallery exhibition ' Adventures of the Black Square'   was  definitely worth the entrance  fee (alas,  I had to hand  in my staff pass which got me in free to  many exhibitions   when I left Kew).  Besides the familiar Mondrian and Albers ,more  powerful in reality than in print, there  was  much that resonated in terms of subject matter ( peeling posters of Klara Liden; crumbly walls and doors of Clay Ketter; David Batchelor's 'found' monochromes ) ; so many artists new to me( many of them women); such imaginative use of materials.  Textiles featured prominently - I'll be writing more about  that in a Ragged Cloth Café Blog post  including  Anni Albers; Rosemarie Trockel; Adrian Esparza; Sophie Taeuber-Arp.
As with the Emily Carr  exhibition I had to buy the catalogue straight away - I couldn't wait to have it posted!

 Besides the  biological recording  courses I'm doing to revive my rusty botanical skills , I've just booked for 2 courses at City  Lit  to  give my art-making  a kick start - ' develop your drawing'  and 'printmaking  on Mondays starting 20 April.

Turner Contemporary at Margate

Wednesday 13th was our 9th wedding anniversary  and we took the day off to travel down to Margate by 'Javelin' train to visit Turner Contemporary for the Mondrian exhibition.  A picture of 'Dune Landscape' has been in my sea inspiration  folder  for many years so it was wonderful to see it  in the flesh, it's much larger than I imagined. Also to see  how the grid  paintings he's known for developed. The Spencer Finch exhibition was also interesting.

There was colour everywhere - I couldn't resist this fading, peeling, beach hut! I also took lots of photos of the art installation by Krijn de Koning  , with and without Ian and his pink shirt which looked different against different colour backgrounds

The building itself worked well with  colours of the sky and sea ( as did the site specific installation by Edmund de Waal)

Apart from viewing the exhibitions , we had a lovely lunch at the café  there  followed  by a walk along the harbour and a few sketches in watercolour ( the   clouds were spectacular but luckily the rain  held off ), returning to the café again for coffee and cake.

We returned to the  station at the same time as lots of families who'd spent the day on the beach ( lots of sandcastles and stripy windbreaks in evidence!) A lovely day with a space out of time quality, back to work on Thursday.