Art Sunday; SPRING

This week a random collection of 'Spring' paintings.........

Above is

 Joyful Spring by Jennifer Vranes
http://www.jensdaily.com/

It is so nice to see little shoots growing again, and to feel the weather getting warmer. I went for a walk by the sea today, the sea was blue, the sky was blue,and the sun was shining. It feels as if we have waited a very long time for this.

Spring Bounty by john Nussbuan
http://www.petfuton.com/paintingsbyjohn/watercolours.htm

Spring by Ludmila Gurar
http://www.artrussia.ru/artists/picture_s.php?pic_id=6085&foa=f

Bluebells by Patricia Richards
http://www.minigallery.co.uk/Patricia_Richards/art52288/

Book of Spring lambs by David Blyth
http://www.minigallery.co.uk/Patricia_Richards/art52288/

Duck with Ducklings by Dan Civa
http://www.dancivagallery.dk/denmark7.html

spring by Frances Landel
http://www.franceslandel.com/paintings.htm

 

 

 

SPRING.................at last, garden 2011, no 1

Yes, here it is, finally my garden is visited by ..... SPRING.
I cannot tell you how happy I am to see life in my garden again. The winter has been so long and so cold, but here, at last, proof that its almost over.

A family celebration and some music.

 Busy Saturday, my daughters 30th birthday, at times like this I feel so old.  We went out for a family meal, daughters who live far away, grandchildren, cousins and their children, friends and even a couple of babies. People and their dogs staying over, there was general mayhem, nice mayhem but exhausting. And then they were gone and I cleared away the debris left behind. Stayed up quite late because I started watching what turned out to be a terribly sad drama about Mo Moland, the politician who did most of the ground work that led to lasting peace in Northern Ireland. Mo was a very  sick woman, in part of the drama she is seen dancing around her living room in nightdress and slippers to this song, not this specific version of this song, but I’ve always liked Leonard Cohen so this is the version I chose. I’ve never really listened to this before, I quite like it. Seems like a nice way to end my hectic Saturday night ( Sunday Morning).

 

Weekend Art; John Piper

JOHN PIPER

John Piper was born in 1946 in Salisbury, Wiltshire, England, and moved to Cornwall on the south coast of the country in 1963.

He settled in Cornwall and for most of his working life has used the countryside and coastline as his inspiration.

You can see his intimacy with the land reflected in his paintings.

He always paints in oils and not, as many artists do these days, in acrylics. His paintings are oil on canvas and sometimes oil on board.

Each painting uses a limited range of colour which captures the light and mood of his chosen landscape. He often uses thick strong colour, sometimes scraped back or scored and then covered in a series of coloured glazes.

Some paintings show the basic drawing through the paint and some are layered to the extent they appear to be relief work.

His landscapes are full of hedges, boundaries, coastline cottages, moors, cliffs, headlands, fields, and of course many, many interpretations of the coastline he loved. This land lends itself to the soft blues, greens and ochres so often found in his work. The effect can be sharp or gentle, hard or soft.

John Piper is a member of the Newlyn Society of Artists and the Penwith Society. I often show Scottish artists who paint the Scottish coastyline and show the traditional way of life in and around the area where I live. This man is not Scottish, he is English and paints a specific area of England, but from these paintings alone you can see how similar this area is to the the East Coast of Scotland. There are many similarities in the landscape and many similarities between this work and the work of the artists working in this area.

 

Weekend Music; The Allman Brothers Band

''The Allman Brothers Band is an American rock band once based in Macon, Georgia. The band was formed in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1969 by brothers Duane Allman (slide guitar and lead guitar) and Gregg Allman (vocals, organ, songwriting), who were supported by Dickey Betts (lead guitar, vocals, songwriting), Berry Oakley (bass guitar), Butch Trucks (drums), and Jai Johanny "Jaimoe" Johanson (drums) While the band has been called the principal architects of Southern rock, they also incorporate elements of blues, jazz, and country music, and their live shows have jam band-style improvisation and instrumental songs.''

Thats what wikipedia has to say about them...........personally, I just think they are great, totally laid back chilled out music.

more of the above here;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Allman_Brothers_Band

Jessica, followed by Melissa;

The Allman Brothers Band

Another weekend gone in a haze of cold, wet, wind and rain..........how I long for better weather. Don't know if any one else is having problems but I couldn't post anything over the weekend, I managed to leave a couple of comments hear and there but thats all. Every time I try to post it gets 'lost'........so I gave up in the end. Maybe its the weather affecting things. This is the third attempt to post a little note.... if this fails think I'll just give up, go to bed and hope it stops raining overnight. Must be wonderful to be a duck or a fish in this weather :-)

Peter Green Man of the World & Albatross

Music to end the weekend with ...........

Peter Green replaced  Eric Clapton in The John Mayall Bluesbreakers and went on to become one of the founder members of fleetwood Mac.  He was recognised as one of the worlds greatest guitarists before suffering severe mental health problems and disappearing from the music scene. He sold his famous 1959 Gibson Les Paul Sunburst guitar during a difficult period when he was struggling to survive on a variety of short lived, low paid, low skilled work.

Oddly enough ...............it was bought by Gary Moore

 

RIP Gary Moore (Thin Lizzie)

Gary Moore - Don't Believe a Word live (Thin Lizzy)

Bandmates of former Thin Lizzy guitarist Gary Moore have paid tribute to a "great player and great guy" following his death on holiday in Spain. 
The 58-year-old, originally from Belfast, was found dead in a hotel room on the Costa del Sol in the early hours of Sunday.

Mean Green Mother :-)

I really, really want to start doing stuff in the garden, but I know I have to wait, its not a good place out there right now,  :-)

Book review, Capitalism 3.0, Peter Barnes

 

BOOK REVIEW

PETER BARNES

CAPITALISM 3.0

I’ve copied this video link from a friends page, the full version lasts 50 minutes and I listened to it while doing some housework. The guys voice can get a bit tedious, but despite that I found myself being drawn into his thinking. It doesn’t matter if you agree with him or not, this seems to me like pretty original ‘ out of the box’ thinking. Not every one will have the time for this, or the inclination, but for me, it was worth it.
The video of him explaining his book

http://fora.tv/2006/10/30/Capitalism_3_0

short review of the same book

 

http://www.capitalism3.com/home

Our current version of capitalism—the corporate, globalized version 2.0—is rapidly squandering our shared inheritances. Now, Peter Barnes offers a solution: protect the commons by giving it property rights and strong institutional managers.
Barnes shows how capitalism—like a computer—is run by an operating system. Our current operating system gives too much power to profit-maximizing corporations that devour our commons and distribute most of their profit to a sliver of the population. And government—which in theory should defend our commons—is all too often a tool of those very corporations.
Barnes proposes a revised operating system—Capitalism 3.0—that protects the commons while preserving the many strengths of capitalism as we know it. His major innovation is the commons trust—a market-based entity with the power to limit use of scarce commons, charge rent, and pay dividends to everyone.
Capitalism 3.0 offers a practical alternative to our current flawed economic system. It points the way to a future in which we can retain capitalism's virtues while mitigating its vices.

Leon Russell, Back to the Island

Music to set the tone for my planned lazy sunday

More paintings of Niko Pirosmani

Art Sunday; Niko Pirosmani

Niko Pirosmani
(Nikolai Aslanovich Pirosmanashvili)

(1862- 1918)

http://www.abcgallery.com/P/pirosmani/pirosmani.html

A couple of weeks ago Kathy posted a picture of a cow that I really liked. I decided to see if I could find other stuff by the same artist, and I did, and here it is. So this post is all thanks to Kathy and her cow really………thanks Kath 

http://www.abcgallery.com/P/pirosmani/pirosmani.html

 Pirosmani (1862? - 1918) was a Georgian Primitivist painter of the turn of the 20th Century. Without any formal education in art or, in fact, much of an education in anything, he made up for this with innate talent and the fecundity of his brush. Over the course of his brief life (he died at the age of 56), much of which passed in poverty and vagrancy, and working with only the cheapest materials, Pirosmani produced an immense number of paintings, a large chunk of which are lost. The artist's work came to public attention only towards the end of his life, almost by accident, and he had only a handful of exhibitions.

I've posted more of his paintings here

http://forgetmenot525.multiply.com/photos/album/288/More_paintings_of_Niko_Pirosmani

Read more here
http://www.abcgallery.com/P/pirosmani/pirosmani.html