Art From London Markets, a-n feature

So it was half term for the kids, the older one was busy studying for her GCSEs and the smaller one and I were lucky enough to spend a few days in Bruges/ Brugge. We arrived via Eurostar in the late morning, slightly delayed by industrial action that impacted on the trains from Brussels, but in time for the market where we bought the lightest and best waffles ever tasted and some delicious strawberries. The market is on Wednesdays and finishes at 1.

It was interesting to take advice about languages from the waffle seller, I explained I spoke French but not Dutch, and she made it clear that in this area they would forgive me for speaking French because I am foreign, but that I might be better off just speaking English. And having known there was some tension but not really known what it was all about, I was not much clearer when she said we are a country that shouldn’t be a country.  It always interests me just which bit of history people chose for their loyalties, their sense of belonging or nationality.  You realise that the stability that we have in Europe within our nation States is fragile.  We know about Britain and Spain and the devolution arguments there,  but they are  common across other countries in Europe,  and then our own current EU UK in or out.  While these things are discussed and decided democratically then at least we have peaceful methods for this change.  So we discussed how a Belgian would know how to speak both and  would know who to speak what to, so a linguistic sophistication in the end.

The “best” chocolatier in the world The Chocolate Line is meant to be in Bruges and we did visit the shop.  It was full of very expensive chocolates in green tea and other oriental flavours.  Interesting and pretty to look at but so expensive you might not wish to buy there.  There were chocolate shops every where and most of them chains but there are meant to be about 5 shops which make thier own, we visited another one where we did buy and taste some lovely chocolate it is in the shop where the mother of the current patron still has the shop she started when she was young.  Its called Dumon, and though fairly expensive, delicious.

The tunnel at the base of the clock tower

Brugges is a beautiful medieval city, that is a pleasure simply to walk around. We went to the wonderful groeninge museum where the real power lies in the earlier galleries.  It is a wonderful exposition of the beautiful skill with which oil paints were used in very early times, and the technical abilities of those very early painters here. (The Januszczak BBC Dark Ages series which has been shown recently starts here on the steps behind the tower of the Markt, through this tunnel in fact.) It also struck me for the first time  that Stanley Spencer was really a medieval artists who situated his biblical stories in his surroundings: So that most prosaically English of artists actually a decended culturally of van de Weyden.  The city recognisable as it is today is the visible back drop of the bibilical imagery here. Previously I had always found the imagery in these landscapes fantastical, perhaps because in my mind they were associated with H Bosch.  But there I was walking through those streets… These earlier galleries show 15th and 16th Century paintings of incredible beauty and skill.

Interestingly the  Groeninge Museum holds a painting by Jan  Provoost   which is an example of ealry censorship: “The Last Judgement” 1525. He had painted mostly clergy as his religious souls who were damned. The council of Brugges ordered 25 years later, that  this was painted over in line with Charles V decree that would not allow for the depiction of the religious clergy as disreputable.  It was only uncovered in  1965. Click on the link above for a little taste, but go there if you can.

We also went to the museum of torture, a reminder of the duality of the society at the time. I had learnt about this in school but forgotten a lot of it. This small museum had a pan European theme, linking the use of torture to classical roots in Eqypt, Greece and Rome and including law from all over Europe including Britain. The exhibition made clear that most of these tortures would never be used on the noble classes, and a disproportionate number were for controlling women.  The way force and  fear were the main means of control became clear, but it was quite difficult to make that sit with the beauty all around.  Here is one of life’s truths, that the producers of beautiful things are not always the producers of beautiful societies.

I suppose what I am thinking is that the best of the developments of the late 20th and Early 21st Century are those based on notions of rights rather than on fear.  Because this is where we go when fear wins out. And the truth is fear is a  powerful tool and therefore tempting for the powerful. But it did strike me as we came out of that museum just how much hate there was floating about under the surface of the human psyche.  So how  that fear is manipulated now, and  (if the progress we have made is to mean anything) the erosion of the rights gained has to be resisted.

And then we went to the chocolate shops to buy chocolates for the people we love at home.

I have been putting together and framing the work for the Open Studios coming up, the work is framed, the statement written, the lists are being done, the publicity is to be picked up on Wednesday and distributed. And to anybody thinking of coming there will be plenty that is at the affordable end of the scale, mostly small works, prints and drawings. If you come on the Friday 24th June 6-8 at night you can have a glass of wine, and if you have a food story to share with me come on Sunday 26th 12-3.

This week is an admin week.   So this week I am pleased to have been offered membership of Plastic Propaganda, and so am preparing the documentation necessary for their website etc.  I have an Open Studios coming up with Open Art Spaces and need to get some invitations printed for two associated events; please do come along.

Opening on Friday 24th 6-8pm come along for a drink and be the first to buy

and Sunday Lunch Confessions invitations for Sunday 26th, come and share your food confessions with me, be recorded and be part of the project.

The events and open studios are all at Faron Sutaria, 506 Fulham Road, SW6 5NJ my lovely alternative space hosts. Nearest tube: Fulham Broadway.

The space is open Friday 24th June 6-8, Sat 25th 11-4 Sunday 26th 12-3,  Sat 2nd July 11-4 and Sunday 3rd July 12-3

I will be selling affordable works with prices from £35 for limited edition prints to £100-200 for small paintings to £1000 for the large piece.

More details ca be found at www.OpenArtSpaces.com

Tunisian Garden, Lost

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I will be taking part in two exhibitions in the next couple of months

“Both Ends of Madness” at the Sassoon Gallery in Folkestone

and “Sugar and Spice” in St Katherine Docks 24th July -7th August

What are the lost stories of Oblivion and Rememberance? Completed work

In a life, in a culture, in an individual? And what does it mean when you have no  access to or power over who you are? When from the outside it can seem that all you are doing is waiting or fighting?  When the individual is just a small part in the whole.

Especially during grief, remembering how huge nature is, like when standing at the edge of a great expanse of water, is a beautiful thing.  There are times when the only power you have is to peer into the depths and let them soothe your soul.

This painting was based on the narrative of the river in Ponte de Lima, it was believed to be the Leith, the village on the other side so suductive, that it had to be deathly, so there would be no return.  And we were talking about soldiers, who I suppose must have a relationship with death that is particular.  Roman Soldiers who had got as far as Portugal, and so that relationship must also be real, they must have had close up experiences by the time they reached there.  And it seems that death was both beautiful and frightening to them.  Understood to be permanent, and the beauty to be illusory?  And then the brave captain, who beat oblivion.  But in reaching beauty and retaining a link to the living beauty triumphed.

Does beauty triumph?

These were Roman soldiers,  they are all long dead now.

The universal grief are all the lost stories of oblivion, the individual stories noone remembers any longer, or half remembers, the regrets and hopes of history.

The barriers to communication which meant they were not preserved, repression, violence, prejudice or simply neglect that allow a persons stories to die with them.  To become lost with them in the midst of dementia or death.

And the counter point, well it isn’t really a captain sallying forth, it is simple things like family and friends, writing, painting, music and poetry.  The power of the powerful may be remembered through architecture, monolithic sculptures and the shapes of our streets, laws made in their name…… but even then for how long?   Individual stories need a more nuanced listening to.

So I have been sorting, mounting,framing pricing and wrapping prints ready for the Fortunate Events Sale on Friday at the Bald Faced Stag, East Finchley.

And working on my 3D piece to submit for the next plastic propaganda show,

Earlier version

This piece realtes to the trade in indigo sugar and slaves and a witness account written by Olaudah Equiano, former slave,  in 1779.

I have also been waiting for answers from a couple of applications…still waiting…. and taking Padma out for the day on Tuesday.  It was warm and sunny so I took her out to Letchworth again for the first time in months.   There are nolonger elephants on the A1M.  In fact she was silent the whole way there, which is becoming more common.  Instead of her telling me the stories from when she worked there, I was telling her her own stories back.  And later she remembered the day we had been there with Rohan and Mimi, and she smiled.  We sat under the apple blossom tree where we had sat a year ago, Mimi not sitting, but climbing them, and she talked about that day and sang some songs we had sung then.  She then told me a new story, she told me that when she was a girl she used to make her sister cry by telling her that the good apples only ripened for her herself, they only came when she went to the tree.  Her sister must have been small because she had believed her and cried.  In the afternoon she was aggitated and muddled again.  I am not so small but….

This week instead of shopping in a market I am selling prints in a market: the Fortunate Events May Fayre in the Bald Faced Stag East Finchley 11 to 4;  come along.