Less than a mile from this keyboard you will find Sheffield's Botanical Gardens - a lovely and long established urban space that is normally free for the public to enter and enjoy. However, one weekend a year the gardens are taken over for an art-themed event called "Art in the Gardens". You have to pay an entrance fee.
The glass house is filled with art and there are marquees and side stalls, food concessions etcetera. Shirley and I spent ninety minutes there on Saturday morning before she went to the Age Concern charity shop where she sometimes puts in a shift.
Maybe I missed some things but I was pleased to admire the art of two professional participants and to get to talk with them.
Roger Allen is chiefly a watercolourist based in The Peak District. Outside the tent where he was exhibiting, he had placed one of his finest pictures on an easel. It evidenced great patience and attention to detail and I found it stunningly beautiful in its green ordinariness. Called "Fin Cop", it focuses on a particular hill that overlooks The River Wye north of Bakewell. I am not at all sure that the image shared below does that exceptional painting justice...
Titled "Quiet Under Red Skies", this is the painting I am talking about...
Here's Greta working "en plein air" on a different painting...
Love the art and the creativity; always inspiring.
ReplyDeleteArt lifts us up.
DeleteI enjoy looking but don't have an ounce of painting talent in me.
ReplyDeleteI bet you could paint a door Deb!
DeleteThey are both excellent artists. We used to go to art shows a lot in Indianapolis, Phoenix and later in Mexico. We have several original artworks from those years.
ReplyDeleteWhy not blog about them Bruce?
DeleteOh, it's all in the past and I've forgotten most of it.
DeleteThe paintings are amazing, I can't begin to imagine the time it must have taken to do all those individual trees in the first one and the lovely blend of colours in the second one.
ReplyDeleteHumans can be so brilliant!
DeleteHow much was RA asking for his landscape? You should have bought it; what a fabulous piece of work.
ReplyDeleteOn his website the price is £2250 but I thought the price ticket at "Art in the Gardens" said £1250 so I am not sure. Anyway, it is hard to believe that that painting is still up for sale.
DeleteHad you not said anything, I would have assumed that the first picture is a photograph, not a painting. It is truly amazing!
ReplyDelete"Quiet Under Red Skies" - now that is exactly the kind I would love to be able to paint. The sky presents an endless fascination to me with its ever-changing light, colours and shapes of clouds, and I am often disappointed of how little my camera can capture of what I have seen with my own eyes. Painting would allow me to express what I felt under that particular sky at that particular moment in time.
Maybe you could take it up as a hobby? Even a one day course could get you started in watercolour painting.
DeleteI think writing and gardening are kinds of art. Even writing daily blogs. We are creating something out of nothing. My mobile phone captures the pictures. The 10 CC song: "Art For Art Sake" comes to mind. Your featured artists are very talented
ReplyDeleteWithout blogging I feel I might have put more energy and time into both writing and painting.
DeleteThe first painting is stunning. I don't think I've ever seen a photo of a painter in such a cold looking place, surrounded by snow.
ReplyDeleteNice to see Greta was wearing gloves!
DeleteHow we wish? but artistic talented is granted to but a few. The paintings capture what the artists sees and feels. Is that first photo truly a painting, the detail is marvelous.
ReplyDeleteThe artist was so humble and self-deprecating. I think he enjoyed my comments and questions for I was genuinely thrilled by it.
DeleteThe first painting is quite incredible in it's detail - an amazing piece of work - I, too, thought it was a photograph! One of my tutors at Art College made the comment about a similarly detailed painting by a student and said that if he'd wanted such detail he would have taken a photograph!
ReplyDeleteThe second painting is much more to my taste - it has colour and life and I like the brushwork.
"Fin Cop" was much more than a photograph and better too. I didn't realise that you had been to art college Carol or maybe I forgot that fact. Do you have some of your own pictures up in your house?
DeleteAs others have said, that top painting looks so much like a photograph. Really astonishing. I like the second one too, though it's much more impressionistic.
ReplyDeleteTwo different approaches.
DeleteThe sheep are so cute, I might have bought that one. You are perfecting the art of living well.
ReplyDeleteLetting time slip by may not be the way to live well.
DeleteI have always been under the impression that artists who dedicate their life and energies to their work are compelled to do just that. I mean- leaving a career in neuroscience to paint? That is dedication.
ReplyDeleteTalented artists here. I am constantly amazed at how different artists give us such different visions of what they see.
The ability to stick with it seems vital - always honing and stretching.
DeleteLovely paintings, Neil! I'm glad you shared their work with us.
ReplyDeleteI started an Art Journal on August 1st and some days I can't figure out what to draw so I just use words on those days instead of sketches. It's fun to play at art but I am definitely NOT an artist. ;)
I hope you stick with your Art Journal Ellen.
DeleteI agree, art takes a lot of time, practice, and patience. I don't have much of any of those sadly:) I like both paintings but for some reason the red in the sky of the second painting bothers me. No idea why.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure about the red either.
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ReplyDeleteI read your comment before you erased it Donna. I am not sure why you ditched it.
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