Tuesday 17 December 2013

Christmas Treats


Nearly Christmas, nearly New Year but there are still lovely art shows around. Just check opening times before you set off.

Last Saturday I strolled along Cork Street, London to the Redfern Gallery to see recent work from one of our successful contemporary landscape artists Kurt Jackson whose work I have admired for some time. The show is beautifully hung. The small paper ones greet you in the hall and as you circle towards the centre of the gallery the scale and weight of each piece grows until you come face to face with a whopper of a painting. The show is of a year’s observations whilst travelling up and down the River Thames and this show flows.

My other observation however is that even though this exhibition has been running for a while, I wasn’t overwhelmed with a rash of red dots and the spots that were there were attached to the smaller, less expensive ones on the whole. This tallies with a recent Making A Mark blog by Katherine Tyrrell. In her article Katherine is talking about a  show at the Mall Galleries last month, but she makes reference to some current art prices in current times. 

On my way to see the Kurt Jackson, I called in to see the Matisse Lithographs next door, which was beautiful and I finished off my morning treat with the Christmas Show at no. 19, Browse and Darby. They have, in my opinion, a jewel of a mixed little show – subtle still lifes and sensitive modern landscapes with the odd portrait thrown in too. This is a show of the representational and figurative 19th and 20th artists whom this gallery represents.  I found the ground floor to be more engaging than downstairs, but I thoroughly enjoyed the gentleness of all these three shows and they will “feed” me over the next couple of weeks until 2014 springs into view…. Or will they? I am in London tomorrow and might find time to go to Tate Modern for the Paul Klee…..

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