Milestones

28 Sept

After an enthusiastic start to the year action petered out on the art front and there was too much else going on. I did get to the Joan Eardley exhibition in Edinburgh in May and enjoyed it immensely. It was wonderfully curated, interspersed with other paintings from artists such as Constable and Monet to provide thoughtful comparisons in technique and topics.

Eardley had such a remarkable career and broadly her work falls into two subjects: the street children of Glasgow and the coastal landscape at Catterline. I love all the texture she creates with paint and pieces of collage. Check out this other overview of the exhibition too. The second Eardley picture here was in a separate exhibition called ‘Earth Matters’ at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, also very interesting. The Anthony Gormley statues are somewhat unnerving but I like them.

Two trips to the Glyndebourne Opera were also very inspiring – the staging of Billy Budd was magnificent, at once conveying claustrophobia and impending chaos. Photo gallery here.

And I enjoyed the twentieth century looks in Tosca – modern yet I’m sure classed as vintage.

On the topic of clothes a lot of my time went on making my dress for Tosca. After a lot of back & forth it got finished in time. I loved this colourful batik print – just had to go big with it, and being cotton was cool for the hot summer days we’ve had this year.