We have had lots of visitors in Bath over the weekend, enjoying some sunny spells, some muggy weather and the odd sudden downpour.

Our summer show of landscape painting continues until 28 August … Click here (or on the image below) to have a look at artists new and established who are on display.
One recognisable piece of brushwork is by Andrew Crocker

ANDREW CROCKER
Trampoline
Oil on Board
98 x 77 cm. (incl frame)

Shall I ever reach
The field enclosed by stones
In the high mountains
Where the scytheless wind
Flushes the swayed grasses?
Where clouds without rain
Add to the sun
Their mirroring shine?
The simple machinery is here
Clear room clear day clear desk
And the hand with its power
To make the heart pour
Into the word, as the sun
Moves upward through the corn.
Meanwhile, where nothing’s sacred
And love no longer willed
Nor our true purpose conscious,
Holy is lucidity
And the mind that dare explain.
-From Stephen Spender The Uncreating Chaos

There are some more cooling images to remind us of our relatively temperate climate:

MARK PAYNE
Dawn at Hinchingbrook Park
Oil on Canvas
100 x 80 cm.

On our walks in the Wiltshire countryside the dog and I now see early eating apples well on their way.

That August time it was delight
To watch the red moons wane to white
’Twixt grey seamed stems of apple-trees;
A sense of heavy harmonies
Grew on the growth of patient night,
More sweet than shapen music is.
But some three hours before the moon
The air, still eager from the noon,
Flagged after heat, not wholly dead;
Against the stem I leant my head;
The colour soothed me like a tune,
Green leaves all round the gold and red.
I lay there till the warm smell grew
More sharp, when flecks of yellow dew
Between the round ripe leaves had blurred
The rind with stain and wet; I heard
A wind that blew and breathed and blew,
Too weak to alter its one word.
The wet leaves next the gentle fruit
Felt smoother, and the brown tree-root
Felt the mould warmer: I too felt
(As water feels the slow gold melt
Right through it when the day burns mute)
The peace of time wherein love dwelt.
There were four apples on the tree,
Gold stained on red that all might see
The sweet blood filled them to the core:
The colour of her hair is more
Like stems of fair faint gold, that be
Mown from the harvest’s middle floor.
From Algernon Charles Swinburne ‘August’

ANDREW CROCKER
At This Time
Oil on Board
88 x 76 cm (inc. frame).

New into the gallery this week we have the latest bronze by Anna Gillespie. One Instagram commenter pointed out, that this ‘blown away’ sculpture surely has as its genesis standing among the…uhm…. gentle zephyrs of a west of Ireland beach (or as we colloquially referred to it, ‘being sandblasted’).
This is not exactly the thought under-pinning this or similar sculptures by Anna. I think that the figure maintaining such stoicism in the face of the buffeting she is taking is more metaphorical- nevertheless the contrast of the dynamic energy depicted, with such a solid material, is impressive and emotive.

ANNA GILLESPIE
In Extremis
Bronze, Ed. 9
49 x 51 x 10 cm.

And finally…..in memory of Megan.

What if you knew you’d be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theatre, tearing them
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm
or press your fingertips
into the life line’s crease.
When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airport, when
the car in front of me doesn’t signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
won’t say thank you, I don’t remember
they’re going to die.
A friend told me she’d been with her aunt.
They’d just had lunch and the waiter,
a young gay man with plum black eyes,
joked as he served the coffee, kissed
her aunt’s powdered cheek when they left.
Then they walked half a block and her aunt
dropped dead on the sidewalk.
How close does the dragon’s spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?
-Ellen Bass ‘Pinned Against Time’
Thank you for……

Aidan Quinn

Beaux Arts Bath