Michael Coombes, Age 75, is now retired having worked in the photo-mechanical processes for photogravure printing for forty five years producing books, magazines, and colour supplements. This career gave him making skills in photography, film, impositions and layouts and obviously also trained his observational abilities to a high degree, particularly his eye for detail and […]
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My first study visit with the Open College of the Arts was at The National Gallery in Edinburgh where Olivia Irvine and myself met up with a group of students from far and wide to see the John Bellany retrospective currently running until the 27th January. The show starts with his college work done as […]
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The City Art Gallery is showing an exhibition of work by the artist George Leslie Hunter until 14th October, along with a free exhibition of other artists exploring the wider context of the Scottish Colourists as a group. I say group, but they were not a group in a traditional sense, more a concurrence. Hunter […]
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Well, I have arrived in Edinburgh and begun my masters programme. The first weeks of the course are being spent unpacking what art education has been in the recent past and could be for us. As an OCA tutor this has proved enormously useful for me and my students. Accessing art education theory and being […]
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Downstairs in the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh, the gallery have drawn together drawings and prints from their collection to stage an absolutely fanstastic exhibition of work by Piranesi which includes his series of invented prisons many of you will already be aware of. Up close these etchings buzz with life and the marks are surprisingly […]
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The Henry Moore Institute in Leeds is staging an exhibition of work by the sculptor Sarah Lucas. ‘Ordinary Things’ looks at Sarah Lucas’ work from a more straight forwardly sculptural, formal position than the one with which she is often viewed due to her ‘brit art sensation / mate of Tracy’ career path. The exhibition […]
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Emma Drye reports from the Van Gogh to Kandinsky exhibition with her sketchbook drawings. Don’t forget there is a study visit coming up on 1st October at this exhibition, so secure your place by emailing enquiries@oca-uk.com. When french poet Jean Moreas published his ‘symbolist manifesto’ in the newspaper le Figaro he urged artists to […]
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Assessment time again, I’m just back from Barnsley and thought I’d have another crack at learning logs from a different angle. Here are 5 invented statements from fictitious learning logs. Have a read of them and see what you think: 1. Lovely day so made up a flask and put my paints in my rucksack. Had […]
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A beautiful new book has been published about the artist Prunella Clough. The book, ‘Regions Unmapped’, has been written by Frances Spalding who many of you will know of as she wrote the Thames and Hudson book ‘British Art Since 1900’. This book is very much a biography, with intimate detail of Clough’s life including […]
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Following on from the questions that were raised about contextual study in my last blog, I’d like to take the opportunity to share the work of my new mixed media student, Jereme Crow, who is in the middle of his level 2 studies. Jereme’s studentship is exemplary, in particular his attitude to contextual studies which […]
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