With Easter upon us it is perhaps timely to dwell on a painting, which not only resonates with the season, but also articulates the horror that continues to unfold in the Middle East and Ukraine. This is Marc Chagall’s ‘Golgotha’ of 1912, perhaps the most luminous, prismatic painting of the […]
Light, daylight, shadow; the richness of the hues, the softness of the shades. What, I often wonder, are we missing when we switch on an electric light, a screen? The microtones, the half-lights, what DaVinci called ‘earth light,’ the mysterious quality of sunlight falling upon a living thing, animating it, […]
As the Samhain banners unfurl, and as winter approaches, thoughts of painting crunch with the leaves and unseen snow. One becomes thoughtful before the fire, burrows inwards, carves out an imaginative hinterland where the cold and the rain cannot enter. Paintings and prints hover as marvellous worlds upon the walls; […]
Her mouth is a fish, her cheek a stingray. One octopus nets her fish-and-otter-hair, another comprises her shoulder, whilst an eel forms her neck and a pearl earring dangles from her ear-shell. Who is she? A painting by a surrealist, you might think, someone modern or contemporary? Perhaps Dali or […]
A living line, trembling with energy. The feeling which charges the hand: a poignant burst, guiding the etching needle, twisting, erupting, flicking and flowing, etching death into a copper plate. Francisco Goya’s series of etchings, ‘The Disasters of War’ (1810-1820), is an arguably unequaled record of cruelty, in the medium of […]
