Friday 2 November 2012

Day off ramble Canterbury Beaney pictures and stuff

 I bought the above books, scruffy but cheap I used to have them and they went astray, I also bought several more books to resell but that's different.
 also another propelling pencil as I realise I shouldn't be carrying around a penknife to sharpen my B grade pencil.
 All these pictures seem to be the wrong way round 100 sheets of practice quality watercolour paper for £16, much better quality than I usually use
 this was done over lunch on my usual paper
 and this at some friends in Canterbury later on the new paper


Bit of an explanation here, the bottom, more expensive paper will take much more in the way of layers of paint and washes while at 16p a sheet is still fairly cheap. This means that it is much easier to form the shape of the rooms I was in, furniture and so on without using a pencil first.

The top picture is much more a coloured in drawing than a watercolour, but mostly it’s the people, what I wanted to play on here is that the viewers mind does a great deal with splodgy faces, once the artist has defined the type, age, sex and so on.

Obviously this is something that doesn’t work so well with a photograph and is going much more down the line of seeing a picture in a strange mark on the ceiling.    

 I tried to Tweet that Kent opera had been murdered but failed, I still have much to learn about Twitter



 these stairs seem particularly lethal to me
 The cup of tea above cost £1.60 in the Beaney, never again.






 The art shop in Canterbury

 not so dangerous going up.




Note the engraved plate here, defaced with the grid of lines to the limited edition can't be compramised












 they have hung mull about a foot away from some of the windows, when I worked in the theatre I used it for special lighting effects which it performs here although the photos don't do it justice.




 next a series of paintings of children














sorry too late to sort this post out properly.

this picture relates to a reply to a comment


16 comments:

  1. it looks good as it is I havent been in the Beaney since I was about 20 years old could I get around in my wheeelchair? I am surre your new paper will be a big success

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    1. Don the revamped Beaney is bristling with wheelchair lifts, disabled loos and has a dedicated disabled car park behind it, so I would give it a go if you can.

      The only thing that worries me is the distribution of these council tax funded arts, libraries and tourist information facilities among the Kent towns and the overall cost to taxpayers.

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    2. But I dont see it as any different from the old days when we had our verges trimmed by hand with red flafs and a brush hook and sythe and our streets cleaned by men not machines. The cash is just spent in different areas, without these facilities the majority of the residents would never be exposed to the arts.

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    3. Don this is about trimming some verges more than others for me. I think you only have to go back less than 20 years to when most towns had a government staffed tourist information office, library and museum.

      The newly revamped Beaney encompasses all three, the artworks on display are essentially the same ones that were on display in the old Beaney, which normally seemed to have one or two gallery attendants, this new one seems to have about twenty.

      Also only a very small part of the gallery space seems to be intended for a regularly changing exhibition.

      Don’t get me wrong here, I enjoy visiting the Beaney, I also have a considerable interest in the arts, but that interest is a critical one when it comes to the arts facilities funded with public money.

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    4. Michael I do understand what you are saying, the amounts are funded by budgets which in real terms amount to very small amounts per household, we seem to have enough money any many other more dubious budgets. I wont hilite the ones which immediately spring to mind for fear of criticism but not one of us will ever agree on where to spend the money. It is all abitrary.

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  2. Twitter is a doddle I am sure you can master it

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  3. I think you are rather harsh on the new Beaney. As an old reactionary, I was sure I would hate it, but was won over on my first visit. Since then, I have called in for an hour or so most weeks and find the exhibits are displayed so much better than in the past. Where it really scores is in its ability to offer something for everyone, not just the modish tastes of the curators as is so often the case. We have only to look rather closer to home! And a word of praise for the library staff, who couldn't be more helpful. I urge anyone to give the new Beaney a try.

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    1. Sorry I don’t mean to be, since it has reopened it has once again become one of the main places I spend my time when in Canterbury. As an art gallery it ticks the main box for me, which is it makes me want to paint and draw.

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    2. I'm glad you like it too! Can you, as an artist, explain what is so sinister about the picture of the girl dressed in black standing in front of a door? It stops me in my tracks every time I visit.

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    3. Ah the Harriet Halhed, I have added a picture of it taken from a different, less powerful angle at the bottom of the post. I would call it a bit of a consciousness reflecting picture, technically the large area of door is probably what makes it so and I think you will find that apart from being the most striking picture in the gallery to most people, they will all have different reasons (if pressed) why this is the case. As an Australian HH would have been very much aware of the power of large empty areas.

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    4. What a difference the fresh angle makes. Thank you. Definitely less menacing. The two grotesque children in the picture below your first photograph of the girl are the stuff of nightmares, but thankfully sufficiently amusing to stop me waking up screaming!

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    5. anonymous 6:29PM,

      I take your point. But a tea bag in hot water with a dash of milk served in a paper and plastic cup is by any reckoning a rip off.

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    6. The long marble stairs in the New Beany are uncomfortable to use. Long strides are necessary. It does appear that only a small space is given to changing exhibitions, but the current one dealing with Drawings is very good-if only there were more of it. The question of culture funding in the whole of east Kent, in my view, needs some revision. Funds seem disproportionally distributed, wonder what it would look like if done on a per capita basis. Dont forget culture funding is a form of social control mechanism only too prevalent today.

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  4. A new Thanet Tory blog ?
    http://thanetcons.blogspot.co.uk/

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    1. Please be warned the first link in the current post on the above website takes you to a site that Google says may have hazardous content, i.e. you may get a computer virus.

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  5. Great selection of pics Michael. Thanks.
    I really liked the painting of the girl at the door too.

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Comments, since I started writing this blog in 2007 the way the internet works has changed a lot, comments and dialogue here were once viable in an open and anonymous sense. Now if you comment here I will only allow the comment if it seems to make sense and be related to what the post is about. I link the majority of my posts to the main local Facebook groups and to my Facebook account, “Michael Child” I guess the main Ramsgate Facebook group is We Love Ramsgate. For the most part the comments and dialogue related to the posts here goes on there. As for the rest of it, well this blog handles images better than Facebook, which is why I don’t post directly to my Facebook account, although if I take a lot of photos I am so lazy that I paste them directly from my camera card to my bookshop website and put a link on this blog.