Yuk I hate the way my page is now, boring boring boring....... Not at all sure why but Multiply is refusing to allow me to post pictures in albums or in blogs. Its also refused to allow me to change the picture on my site which is why I've ended up with this boring white page. Is this happening to any one else??......... I've battled with Multiply for most of the day, I'm tied of it now and I'm going to bed, but if this is happening to any one else or if you know how to fix it..............I'll be back tomorrow to check out replies. I think its the Multiply way of punishing me for being a deserter for so long.............

Art Sunday D J Fergusson

Yesterday I spend an hour or so wandering around the Fergusson Gallery in Perth. The first pleasant surprise was the gallery itself. It’s a grade A listed structure originally built as Perths first Waterworks. It was designed by Dr Adam Anderson ( engineer and then rector of Perth Academy) and completed in 1832. It’s one of Scotlands best cast iron industrial monuments.
It’s also the earliest known example of cast iron building in Scotland. Perth used to use the river Tay as its main source of water but as early as 1750 the Town council recommended looking for alternative sources of fresh water due to contamination of the river. By 1820 no solution had been found and Anderson was appointed by the council to find a suitable supply.

It wasn’t until about ten years later that Anderson, unable to come up with a viable supply of fresh water put forward his extraordinary and very radical plan to build an infiltration system. His scheme was probably only accepted because the town recognized his previous success at providing the town with its first gas supply.  Anderson acted as architect, planner, chemist, geologist, physicist and engineer. An Act of Parliament was needed (granted 1829) to authorize the construction of Perths first waterworks. The waterworks was designed as a massive sandstone drum, sandstone being the local stone, surmounted by a cast iron water tank and covered by an iron dome.

This wonderful building has been threatened with demolition several times but it was finally saved from the threat of demolition and restored to its original condition by public concern and the Perth Civic trust in the 1960’s. It was initially used as the tourist information centre, when they were re-housed it was used as a general gallery by Perth council and now, after extensive refurbishment, it is the permanent home of the Fergusson collection and the National Centre for the study and appreciation of his work. The Fergusson gallery was opened 0n Fergusson’s birthday 9th march 1992.

http://www.pkc.gov.uk/Education+and+learning/Museums+and+galleries/Fergusson+Gallery/

Fergusson was born in Leith near Edinburgh March 9th 1874. His parents both came from Pitlochry and Fergusson always considered Perthshire and the highlansda his spiritual home. As a young man he enrolled at Edinburgh to train as a painter but after only a few months he left to study on his own. He set himself a rigid timetable of painting and drawing from life mostly in the open air. His inspiration came from the Glasgow boys, a group of painters based around the Glasgow School of Art and the French naturalist painters.

He visited and studied in France regularly learning to make small quick studies which could later be worked from in a studio. One of the biggest influences during this time was Whistler, especially the work exhibited in Paris at the Memorial exhibition 1905.

He continued to live and work in different parts of France, and in 1913, in Paris, he met his lifelong partner Margaret Morris, a young dancer and painter who was visiting Paris with her own dance company.
During the war years Fergusson and Margaret returned to Britain, she stayed in London and he divided his time between her in London and his family in Edinburgh. Toward the end of the war he was commissioned to make a series of paintings in the naval dockyard Portsmouth.

 At the end of the war Margaret began establishing her various dance schools and Fergusson developed his reputation as one of Scotland’s greatest painters. He died in 1961 and it was Margaret Morris who inherited most of his work. She realized its importance and it was her who, in 1963, established the J D Fergusson Art Foundation to administer the collection.

The collection had, at that time, no permanent home but was loaned out regularly to various other international galleries. Now the collection of over 150 oil paintings, hundreds of watercolours and drawings, 23 sculptures, and around 60 and sketch books are all housed and stored under one roof. The archives, consisting of around 3000 letters, 500 photographs and Fergussons personal library are also part of the permanent collection. I have to say………..what a grand day out that was 

For more information see
http://www.exploreart.co.uk/artistic_styles_details.asp?ArtistID=27&ArtisticStyleID=4

Also, quite a long time ago I did another post on Fergusson, here

http://forgetmenot525.multiply.com/journal/item/62/J._D._Fergusson_Scottish_Colourist
The red sail is one of the paintings Fergusson was commissioned to paint of Portsmouth Dockyard.
John Duncan Fergusson
Oil Painting
Fine Art
In this late painting, Fergusson shows how his association with the Fauvists, affected his work. Fergusson settled in Paris in 1907 and soon after his work underwent radical chqnge. He began to paint using bold colours and simple, flattened shapes. Even in this late work, probably painted after Fergusson settled in Glasgow, the lasting influence of Fauvists can be seen
He is primarily remembered a one of the Scottish Colourists, they were four Scottish artists who worked independently of one another but believed in the same approach to painting. These men were Samuel John Peploe, John Duncan Fergusson, George Leslie Hunter and Francis Boileau Cadell. The group all trained in France and the French influence can be seen in their work. Fergusson, more than the others was influenced in his later work by the Fauvist movement. 

Margaret Morris, artist and dancer.

above; Margaret Morris by John Duncan Fergusson.

Today I went to the John Duncan Fergusson  gallery in Perth. His paintings are wonderful, and I will do a whole post on him but; he also had a lesser known but extraordinary life partner called Margaret Morris
She was a fellow painter but also a dancer. As a child she took classical ballet lessons but by the age of about 12 had decided she wanted to create her own more ‘freer, more natural’ method movement.

She went on to develop her own technique of dance which embraced the recreational, therapeutic, athletic and creative elements of dance . This amalgamation of art and dance became known as ‘Margaret Morris Movement’ (MMM). This  evolved into the core training for her performing arts students when, in 1910,  she opened her first school. She went on to head performance dance companies from the 1920's through to the 1960’s.

She was one of these multi talented ladies who could also draw, paint and design. Her natural interest in form, line and colour had left its mark on not only her paintings, but those of her husband as well.

Much more information here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Morris_%28dancer%29
A Margaret Morris Quote
I first realised the absolute necessity of relating movement with form and colour when studying painting of the modern movement in Paris in 1913. From that time I incorporated it as one of the main studies in my school. In this connection I am deeply indebted to J D Ferguson, the painter, who for years has taught the painting design and sculpture in my school and who first made me realise the possibilities of theatrical work considered from the visual point of view, and the value of the study of form and colour as a means of education.
Margaret Morris 1925

This little film was being shown on continuous loop at the gallery.



And this one shows her legacy………….

Roscobie Loch december 2011

Another day out with my friend. The weather was much better than the previous day when we drove around the glens.

Glen Clover in the rain, December 2011

After Christmas

January 12 2012

12th of January already……….and it’s taken me this long to feel ‘back to normal’.  I’ve had my daughter and her son staying, I’ve stayed with my other daughter and her children, I’ve had my grandchildren (plus dog) staying with me AND I’ve managed to find the time to catch up with a couple of good friends.

The grandchildren helped pack away the decorations, we walked along the beach and they spent a while painting on some of my spare canvas. By the time my daughter came to stay I had my newly decorated bedroom ready for her, she was most impressed with my decorating achievements and quite proud to be the first one to sleep in the new room.

I even managed to stay with a friend for a couple of days. We spend one damp and stormy afternoon driving around the glens. It was actually very pleasant in the glens, and beautiful. The colour and light up there at this time of year is quite different to those pleasant sunny scenes you find on calendars. I never find the Christmas holidays much of a ‘holiday’ as such, it’s always a busy time, it tends to be hectic but very enjoyable.

Now every one has gone back to their own homes, I’ve no one staying here and I’m not staying with any one else, so here I am, back to normal, just me, on my own, in my own little flat. Now my house guests have all left I’ve moved myself and my furniture into my new bedroom. My daughters were very practical this Christmas, they bought me vouchers which were used to buy all the finishing touches for my new bedroom, new curtains, a new lamp and a little heater for when the wind is howling and it’s a bit chilly.

I’m back at work, in fact it feels as if I were never away from the place and on my wall at work there is a chart. I made the chart last term but I’ve only just got around to pinning it to the wall. It’s a countdown to retirement chart. I’ve worked out that I have another 14 paydays before retirement and this chart has each payday in a square ready to be crossed off as soon as the pay slip lands on my desk. 14 paydays doesn’t sound very long.

I’m preparing to start decorating again. It’s time to tackle the other bigger room, the one that I was using as a bedroom. That room is my biggest room and will be somewhat of a challenge. Now that my living room is decorated and I’ve moved into the ‘new’ smaller bedroom, the plan is to strip the big room back to plaster, decorate from scratch and use it as a studio. A place where I can store all my painting, drawing and craft equipment and where I can paint without having to clean up and put every thing away after every session. It will also double up as a guest room but that’s ok because most of the time it will just be my studio.
I look forward to retirement but at the same time have become acutely aware of the value of each day.

Every night I realise that one more day of my life is over, it’s a scary thought. Time is something you can’t get back and so even thought I look forward to retirement I want to find a way to value every day between now and then. Some days I wake up, get ready, make the ten minute walk to work, spend the day doing things for other people and then make the ten minute walk home, by which time the day is done and the light is fading. On these days I feel cheated, a bit like when you buy something you can’t really afford only to get it home and realise you wasted your money and have no way of getting that money back. Time is more precious than money and I’m really getting to hate it when I reach the end of the day and feel as if the day is wasted. One more day of my life has passed, a day I will never get back, and if I can’t remember any thing special about that day, I feel cheated. Which is why, even if I only walk from my house to my work and back again, and even if I’m only out of my house for less than half an hour, I’m going to look for something that I can think of at the end of the day that will make me think the day wasn’t wasted. Maybe I will even take my camera with me and make sure I take at least one picture a day. One picture of something good every day could be a balance to the inevitability of life being one day shorter. Because my life is shorter at the end of every day it must also be richer in some way. Otherwise what’s the point??