In April I made this small painting – a view from our balcony at night. It shows our dog Shula, the park behind our building, and the similar apartment buildings opposite ours. It’s a clear night with stars, and my geraniums and petunias are doing well…..(apologies but the blue looks a bit lurid on the screen…)
April also saw my Edgware painting at the RBA annual exhibition at the Mall Galleries in central London – I was so excited to be a part of such a large London exhibition with so many really amazing works of art!
The RBA (Royal Society of British Artists) holds its annual exhibition at the Mall Galleries, and features works mostly, I think, by RBA members, but also by wildcard, free-wheelin’, cotton-pickin’ non-members like me. There is no specific theme to the exhibition, but the work is mostly figurative art in a variety of styles.
My painting is now for sale at the Mall Galleries website here. (Alternatively you can buy a canvas print here. )
And here’s the text I wrote with my submission for the exhibition:
This painting is set in suburban London in about 1974. It shows two men in their best Saturday synagogue clothes, greeting each other in the street. (They’re based on friends of my Dad’s). A woman is walking her dog nearby – she may be the fabled Mrs Kuchinsky – and behind them, peering through the window of her front room is my grandma Polly. The house appears as it did throughout my childhood, the scene of many family meals, cosy winter afternoons and lazy summer days in the garden when I would explore my uncle’s wartime tin trains amongst the old gas masks, tools and other dusty clutter in the garden shed.
One of the main elements in my memory is of the unique physical textures of the house: The rough pebble-dash wall surfaces, the smooth rounded stones embedded in the concrete of the driveway, the unusually rough zig-zag pattern within the bricks, the strange, rough-smooth, black-purple stones in the garden wall, and the black curly ironwork of the garden gate. In this artwork, I used sand-texture paste to try and recreate the feel of some of these. When I touch the picture, I can feel that beloved place and time in a most immediate and tactile way.
Subsequent owners have significantly remodelled this house in the years since my Grandma lived there. A lot of the details which gave it its special period character have gone. And of course, the front garden and drive are now a large area of block paving, with green plastic wheelie bins as residents.
PS: Car fans please note the dark green Triumph 1500 in the neighbours’ drive. The Trackmans next door, according to my uncle, didn’t actually own a Triumph 1500, so we must assume that it belongs to a friend or relative.
Music from Israel and Morocco
And finally, purely for your Middle Eastern entertainment, I leave you with a link to a video I’ve been enjoying. It’s from Neta Elkayam, an Israeli singer of Moroccan heritage who is actually more popular in Morocco than in Israel. Here she’s singing Muhal Nensah, a Moroccan song, with her friends at “Jimmy’s Parliament” in Jerusalem. What I enjoy more than the music, actually, is the atmosphere and the people in the video. I think you’ll see what I mean!
