Tag Archives: art

mooving to a different beat

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We approached the city centre on foot.

There was crowd gathered. A loud crowd. There was shouting. Oh no, what are we complaining about now? It’s not time to protest about that already, surely? Is it even still marked? Closer inspection showed my outmoded thinking.

A huge tv screen. Crowds. The rowing. Local chaps. Ah. Of course I joined in with the vocal support. Girl1 was even approached by a journalist and was able to define herself as a pupil of the big school. The day had started well.

But we were there for a different gathering. BelfastTimes featured it, and I wasn’t going to miss out.

We have us the cows. Cow parade is the world’s largest public art event and it has arrived in Northern Ireland. Unusually, the cows will be spread across the region, not confined to a city. We saw the Belfast cows in the grounds of the City Hall, before they set off to veraious locations around the town. After being on display for a few months, all the cows will be auctioned for charity.

I’m so glad when the grass is full of colour and healthy support for athletes.

I’m so glad when we have nothing extraordinary to complain about, but plenty to shout about.

beauty, and war

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I’ve always liked the paintings of Sir John Lavery; the beautiful languid ones of his wife, the water, and even those teeny, dangerous planes. These are in the local museum and readily available for me to gawp at any time.

The Green Coat

 Daylight Raid From My Studio Window, 7 July 1917

Under the Cherry Tree 

Until recently I had no idea that Lavery was so prolific – there must hardly have been a society or political type who wasn’t painted by him- nor that he was an official war painter. He became too ill to travel to the Western front, but was still able to paint the war.

The First Wounded at the London Hospital, 1914 

Scapa Flow, Orkney, from the Signal Station 

So many discoveries: not only more of Lavery’s art than I’d imagined, but a website where I can see all sorts of paintings in the UK museums from the comfort of my front room, and that Hazel Lavery might have been an interesting woman to know.