Visiting Verrocchio

by | May 2, 2019 | art, history, Italy

500 years ago Leonardo died in France. In 1452 he was born to a peasant girl in the village of Vinci not far from Florence. His father, a Florentine lawyer, had no legitimate male heir, so decided to adopt him. He probably always felt he was an outsider, so it would...

Guardians

by | Mar 20, 2019 | art, General interest, history, Italy, museums, people, travel

What are the guardians of order thinking as they peruse the open spaces before them and the people gathering or passing by? There they are outside Buckingham Palace in their red jackets and bearskin headgear endlessly perused by the public day in, day out. I admire...

Aleppo

by | Mar 6, 2019 | art, General interest, history, museums, people, travel

I did not want to paint this word-picture, but Aleppo has crept into the news again, pulling a shroud in its wake. My memories; its wake. A rugged fortress with crusader connections overlooked a vast labyrinth of streets that seemed to wriggle, half-underground, in...

Maelstrom

by | Jan 23, 2019 | art, General interest, history, people, travel

Waterfalls unite beauty with a wondrous spectacle of sound and sight. Leaning perilously over a bridge or crag, such as the spectacular Iguaçu waterfall between Argentina and Brazil, the thrill of beauty laced with fear shivers through one – unforgettably. Below...

Fragments

by | Jan 9, 2019 | art, childhood, General interest, history, people, reading groups, travel

These fragments I have stored against my ruins’ –  T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland (near the end) Still clear in my memory is the sense of freedom I felt as an eight-year-old when, in a class spelling bee, I went to the top of the line for remembering ‘Mississippi’...