Art Appreciation

This morning I did some cooking and baking for our London escapees coming tomorrow.

It was back to a snell wind and grey sky again. They said it was 7 degrees but with the wind it felt less. I was wearing 4 layers plus winter coat, gloves and scarf to go to Art Appreciation this afternoon. Geoff did a presentation on drawing. It was really interesting. He started with different ways we use drawing from IKEA Billy shelf-building diagrams to Rennie MacIntosh’s architectural drawings for Glasgow School of Art to logos and road signs. He moved on to the first drawings, cave paintings in France from 30,000 BCE then we had Durer and other well-known artists. Many, many Durer and Leonardo are in the Royal Collection so we’ll never see them. I hadn’t heard of Zhao Mengjian who painted sometime during the Song Dynasty (960-1279). Blipping lovely. We spent a while looking at Frida Kahlo’s Ruina, trying to interpret and speculate on the complexity of it. I’m also going to investigate Finn Campbell Notman as I liked the looseness of the charcoal and ash “Fighting Fire with Fire”.

I was asked if I’d like to contribute to a session but I’m not sure - I’m new to the group and most of the people in it are so knowledgeable, many having been to art college or lecture - one woman is an expert on Venetian art and guides people round the duke’s collection (second only to the king’s). I’ll think about it for next year. Maybe Yayoi Kusama.

Friends Carol and Phil can’t come on Saturday. He was in A&E this morning for a scan but nothing showed up except he tested positive for Covid. What terrible symptoms this illness has. I hope they find something on a TV channel to watch other than the crowning.

#2 daughter is in Berlin for work. Just her, giving 3 hour presentations, one today and one tomorrow. I hope it went ok and the technology worked for her. At least she can speak German. Maybe not on technical stuff though.