Meeting Bench

JAN TOOROP (1858/1928), DUTCH SYMBOLIST PAINTER – Painting Desire and Satisfaction

QUICKLY ADAPTED TO NEW STYLES AND GENRES JAN TOOROP 1/3 – He was born on the island of Java, has Dutch parents and his early childhood was wrapped up by the oriental suggestions of this island. He had attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Amsterdam, being artistically influenced in Brussels, in the shadow of the symbolic poetry environment. After …

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THE MEETING BENCHES AUTHOR’S TRAVEL – Take an artistic journey with creative Englishman

Carnoustie is a really special North Sea town (Central-Eastern Scotland), https://www.visitscotland.com/info/towns-villages/carnoustie-p241441 located along the estuary of Barry Burn. We took a break at the Carnoustie Golf Course Hotel with nice clean room, good pool Jacuzzi, great breakfast and friendly staff.                        This resort is famous for its golf courses, but also because here lives and works painter ALAN MACDONALD, whose …

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THE SHORT MUSICAL HISTORY OF THE DANCING ELF

The name of the musician born in London on September 30, 1947 was Mark Feld, but this singer, guitarist and composer (frontman of the band Tyrannosaurus Rex), who died in a road accident before his thirtieth birthday is known as Marc Bolan. The son of a truck driver, who grew up in East London had a big passion for rock …

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TO THE LIGHTHOUSE – Novel, by Virginia Woolf

A book which follows the tradition of the Modernist novel, the one, where the plot has secondary importance to the psychological introspection of the characters. To the lighthouse is a novel published for the first time in 1927. In 1998, the Modern Library named the novel No. 15 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th …

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JOURNEY INTO POETRY – Edith Sitwell, an avant garde poet and English genius

You also would stand in fron her image at the National Portrait Gallery, where people still stare at her aquamarines with the size of puddles. She, an English poet and an essayist, was born in Scarborough in 1887. Edith Sitwell writing life began around 1912, when she was 25. She was born into a noble family and was the sister …

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ALICE MUMFORD (1965), BRITISH PAINTER – Colour and tone, warm and cool

RELATIONSHIP OF THE OBJECTS, ONE TO ANOTHER, IT EXCITES AND ABSORBS ME ALICE MUMFORD 1/3 – She is a Colombia-born painter born in 1965. She lives and works in Cornwall and studied at Falmouth College of Art and Camberwell School of Art. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9TloXNvfu8 She teaches life drawing and painting at St Ives School of Painting. Her brush by many creative …

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GEORGE UNDERWOOD (1947), BRITISH FIGURATIVE PAINTER – The artist who led David Bowie to make music

PAINTING FIGURES ENIGMATICALLY AVOIDING THE VIEWER’S GAZE GEORGE UNDERWOOD 1/3 – That boy, who in 1963 had joined the Beckenham Art School, was born in 1947 in Bromley, a hamlet in London in the south-east of the British capital. Along with David Bowie (his great friend), he began a career in the music world, deciding that musical activity understood his …

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PHILIP WILSON STEER (1860/1942), BRITISH IMPRESSIONIST PAINTER – Fascinating history of modest man, who had dedicated himself to art

IMPRESSIONIST LANDSCAPES, WRAPPED IN FOGGY PICTORIAL STYLE PHILIP WILSON STEER 1/3 – He, the son of a portrait painter, was born in Birkenhead (Merseyside, near Liverpool), http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/11-reasons-merseyside-most-underrated-3748949 and had become the leader among the progressive British artists of his generation. He spent his childhood and youth at Whitchurch (near Ross-on-Wye, just three miles from the English-Welsh border), and studied at …

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JOHN CONSTABLE (1776/1837), BRITISH ROMANTIC PAINTER – When is difficult to name a landscape in which the sky is not the key note

MOVING CLOUDS IN BOUNDLESS SKIES, LEAFY TREES AND CRUMBLING WATER MILLS JOHN CONSTABLE 1/3 – That native of East Bergholt (Suffolk), http://eastbergholt-bells.org.uk/ son of a wealthy cereal merchant, shared with Turner the fame of the greatest English landscapist. He had been educated to begin a business career, but in 1799 his father had to accept his enrollment at the Royal …

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ALAN MACDONALD (1962), SCOTTISH PAINTER – Pictorial clues, distant coast of you

VISUAL TRAVEL WITH UNKNOWN DESTINATION ALAN MACDONALD 1/3 – His work is always recognisable for its mix of old-master technique and modernity. He was born in Malawi (Central Africa), attended College of Art in Dundee, Scotland. http://www.alanmacdonald.net/ He lives and works in a small town, not too far from medieval Edinburgh, Scotland. His beautiful paintings have a potent sense of …

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