Art on the Hill

Glorious summer weather this weekend at the beginning of October for Windmill Hill's Art Trail.  The link is here. 

I didn't get to see as much of the work on show as I had hoped because of too many other things in the way, but I did manage about a dozen venues and really liked much of what I saw.  In particular, Ruth Broadway's beautiful pen and ink drawings of domestic things such as this one; Jo Mann's interestingly textural abstract landscapes like this one http://www.artonthehill.org.uk/jo-mann.html (which had special resonance given the work we've been doing in painting this week);  and Anna Warsop's really interesting collagaph prints based on aerial photography and landscape s and maps.  Some of these worked well as paintings too, and the collagraph plates themselves had a richness of texture which made them both tactile and visually compelling, an example is here http://www.artonthehill.org.uk/anna-warsop.html.

 I also really liked Peter Ford's prints onto hand-made paper, on show at his Off Centre Gallery in Cotswold Road.  The link is here.  Very rich texture and depth of colour, built up from small units, no more than about 6" square, and each unit very simple largely geometric shapes and patterns.  The thickness and texture of the papers adds to the complexity of the finished pieces.  Lovely, inspiring work.

On Sunday evening I was part of the Windmill Hill Chorus which sang Haydn's Creation, after only 6 rehearsals on preceding Sunday afternoons.  It went pretty well, in spite of us in the back row of the altos getting a bit lost from time to time.  The soloists were brilliant, and the audience seemed to think we were OK.  Fun singing, anyway.