With the October sun low in the sky, the light can suddenly illuminate a portion of Bath Stone.

With 3 years of hoarding around the Abbey now at an end, the building was last week used for the filming of Willy Wonka, and temporarily the benches in front of the Abbey at this particular vantage point in Abbey Courtyard, were removed.

Thus the whole building was for once visible from York Street. It is a nice surprise to see the Eastern face of the Abbey in all its glory.

Though the foliage outside is very much on an autumnal turn, I love coming into the gallery to the lush colours of Rebecca Campbell’s paintings.

They really are uplifting:

And one can be transported by the ethereal nature of Linda Felcey’s seasonal English blossoms, flowers, pottery and little birds.

Come just after the sun has gone down, watch
This deepening of green in the evening sward:
It is not as if we’d long since garnered
And stored within ourselves a something which

From feeling and from feeling recollected,
From new hope and half forgotten joys
And from an inner dark infused with these,
Issues in thoughts as ripe as windfalls scattered

Here under trees like trees in a Dürer woodcut –
Pendent, pruned, the husbandry of years
Gravid in term until the fruit appears –
Ready to serve, replete with patience, rooted

In the knowledge that no matter how above
Measure of expectation, all must be
Harvested and yielded, when a long life willingly
Cleaves to what’s willed and grows in mute resolve.

Seamus Heany ‘Rilke: The Apple Orchard’ (Thanks to David)

On a somewhat late walk last Sunday I was treated to a bright moon and evening mist crawling across the field to meet me..


These hills, beneath the October moon,
Sit in the valley white with mist
Like islands in a quiet bay,

Jut out from shore into the mist,
Wooded with poplar dark as pine,
Like points of land into a quiet bay.
-Edna St Vincent Millay

Last but not least our Akiko Hirai exhibition of pottery has two more weeks to run and there are still some lovely examples of her work to be had….such as this lovely Don Buri teabowl…..

And finally…..

Mild the mist upon the hill
Telling not of storms tomorrow;
No, the day has wept its fill,
Spent its store of silent sorrow.

O, I’m gone back to the days of youth,
I am a child once more,
And ‘neath my father’s sheltering roof
And near the old hall door
I watch this cloudy evening fall
After a day of rain;
Blue mists, sweet mists of summer pall
The horizon’s mountain chain.

The damp stands on the long green grass
As thick as morning’s tears,
And dreamy scents of fragrance pass
That breathe of other years.
-Emily Jane Brontë

Thank you for reading,

Aidan Quinn

Beaux Arts Bath

Aidan Quinn

Beaux Arts Bath