Category: blackandwhite

Saint Bartholomew: Don’t Look Now

architecture, Art, artist, black and white, blackandwhite, Fuji x100s, image manipulation, Italy, monochrome, photography

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Saint Bartholomew (Matthew 10:3, Mark 3:18, Luke 6:14, Acts 1:13) never set foot in Milan but his statue has been the talk of the town for the past four and a half centuries. Just ask Mark Twain. Then again, the tradition of Bartholomew, which purports that he was skinned alive and beheaded in Albanopolis, Armenia (modern-day Turkey), is the stuff of legends. Bartholomew, now the patron saint of tanners, is usually depicted with a large knife and holding his own skin.

In many ways this image reveals the power of compact modern digital cameras to capture detail. When I took this shot of the famous statue of St Bartholomew in the Milan Duomo I was aware of the father and daughter figures to the right of the frame. However, I didn’t fully appreciate the significance of their body language until I edited the image later.

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New Forest Paintings

Art, artist, black and white, blackandwhite, Fuji x100s, painter, painting, photographer, photography, UK

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A traditional portrait of the artist in monochrome. These are the paintings from the first week here in Woodlands, hope you like the ‘moody’ black and white photograph taken by my daughter Louisa….it’s a good option to show the texture of the works.

New Forest Residency: The Forge

Art, artist, black and white, blackandwhite, new forest, painter, painting, photography, UK

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My residency in the New Forest is in one of the most amazing places, I will be working above a blacksmiths workshop alongside skilled craftsmen who produce some of the most wonderful and beautifully designed metal work. From an artists point of view, the machinery in the workshop is an absolute treasure trove of hard edged shapes , structures and surfaces. Now I have a problem, do I continue to focus on the forest and nature or try to incorporate elements of the machine and the man made?

Below are a few shots I collected on a brief tour early this morning. All images taken on a Canon eos M Mirrorless with 22mm lens….unfortunately my Fuji X100S was dropped on the floor and is away for repair at the moment.

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New Forest Residency

Art, artist, black and white, blackandwhite, landscape, painter, photographer, photography

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I have just started a 2 week artists residency in the New Forest in Hampshire and I feel energised by the possibilities. I will be posting a series of images based on my day to day experience of being here, in this ‘place’. My main intention is to produce a series of paintings that say something about the New Forest; not a new ambition by any means….but I will also be using photography to document my thoughts and ideas. I just need to allow myself to be absorbed by what I see and feel, to literally just be here… Let’s see what happens.

Inadvertent Christo

Art, artist, black and white, blackandwhite, cambridge, cambridgeshire, Fuji x100s, landscape, photographer, photography, UK

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I stumbled across this ready-made Christo in the grounds of Anglesey Abbey, near Cambridge. I think they would be delighted.

 

‘When Christo began to wrap objects in 1958, he used everyday objects such as shoes, telephones and empty paint cans to make his sculptures. Once wrapped, the objects would take on a new identity. By wrapping them, he would reveal some of the most basic features and proportions of the object by concealing the actual item. Christo and Jeanne-Claude later expanded this idea in projects such as The Pont Neuf Wrapped and the Wrapped Reichstag, but on a much larger scale. While the intricate details of the structures are hidden, the essence of the structures are revealed all the while making the imposing and solid structure seem airy and nomadic’.

‘The use of real fabric also gives the work a fragile, sensual and temporary character while wrapping objects is definitely an important part of their œuvre, Christo and Jeanne-Claude have done very few wrappings in comparison to their whole portfolio of artworks. It is easier for some to grasp the wrapping concept and refer to their artworks entirely as “wrapping,” but the work is more about altering an environment than wrapping – which is only one way to do that. The last time the artists had an idea for a wrapping was in 1975, when they had the idea of wrapping the Pont-Neuf in Paris, ten years before they realized the work of art.’

http://christojeanneclaude.net/faq

Coveney Road

agriculture, Art, artist, black and white, blackandwhite, cambridgeshire, fenland, Fuji x100s, landscape, photographer, photography

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Coveney is a village north of Cambridge in Cambridgeshire in the UK. It is part of the Cambridgeshire Fenlands, an extensive flat terrain of fertile agricultural land once flooded but systematically reclaimed with the help of Dutch drainage engineers. I frequently cycle along these narrow and uneven roads, avoiding the pools of water and stretches of mud churned up by fleets  of farm vehicles that criss cross the fens at this time of year. When I see something of interest, I stop and capture the scene with my camera.