Afternoon in the countryside

Yesterday we had a REAL summer day in  Scotland (yes, like a summer for reeelz!) so we decided to do some work on the sunny early afternoon and visit one of the venues where we will be soon working taking pictures. We had all the lovely bits within one day - sunshine, baby ducklings and lots of history. A very pleasant afternoon indeed and now we are back to the usual Scottish summer which means rain all day and temperature hovering not much above +15 degrees...Luckily I have to sit all day at home and process images for clients!

House for An Art Lover Picture Heavy

House for An Art Lover

Some of you who know me might recall that I am a big fan of Charles Rennie Mackintosh work. To the extent that when I got a scholarship in Paris (in a very prestigeous ESAG design school) instead of Glasgow School of Art, I was very disappointed (well, untill I went to Paris that is, where I had the most inspiring time of my life). However my sentiments to Charles Rennie's work remain the same.

Last weekend we have managed to visit a reconstructed Mackintosh project (the house was originally designed by Mackintosh and his wife, just on paper for a competition and never been executed in real life) - a House for Art Lover in Glasgow. One can get there by a 10 minutes ride on a train from the Glasgow Central which lands one in a very affluent neighbourhood. It looks like a perfect location for a property for an art enthousiast.

House was built with community funds overs several years in the 1990s and seems to be pretty accurate reconstruction of Mackintosh architectural utopian idea though I could not help but notice that sometimes the particular for Mackintosh work proportions were lost (understandably though as the idealised drawings had to be translated into real building with all its ingeneering and construction demands) and council put some weird art works (not at all connected with architect's work style and quite frankly ugly) in the garden. The groundfloor cafe had some peculiar objects for sale (like a comic about the architect's life and lots of silver jewellery better or worse inspired by his work) but it was full of people willing to spend an afternoon in this still very eye pleasing place with good vibes of a coherent concept. It is a clever combination of old architectural forms (the main hall remaining a medieval castle) with some naval forms and 17th century houses windows proportions (Simon remarked that one of the facades really looks like his old family house which was a building from mid 17th century), all incorporated in an unique form of a very modern looking building.

I wonder if Charles Rennie and Margaret would like how their idea was translated into real life (maybe minus weird, starck white, health-and-safety railings protecting one from falling off some 5 cm high steps in the garden...) or being perfectionists, they would be slightly dissapointed by financial and aesthetical compromises that had to be made in the final execution of the project. I rather think that they woud be jolly glad that finally someone in Scotland realised that they were unique artists. And now Glasgow can cash on the architects whose work was considered too sophisticated and he was not able to make a living out of it.

White bull-terriers

Lucien Freud dissapeared quietly in his home on 20th of July 2011, reaching a satisfying age of 88.

He is undobtedly on of my favourite painters, with whose work I can relate to as I do not especially flatter my subjects or myself either. Though I still have to take a picture of myself with a black eye as he once famously did (after a fight with a taxi driver when he was in his 60s). When I first came accross his work (in 2000, when in Paris I immediately bought a huge album with his nudes and lugged it bravely on the plane home) it was a love at first sight. I like how he is painting but at the same time the distortion is very photographic and the shapes drawn just like with a pencil (that is why I also like Hockney so much because it it not much of a painter but more of a drawing man).

Or I simply like clear outlines because I have enough of blurriness in my life when I take my lenses out...

Or actually it was a white bull-terrier in one of his portraits, the very fist one reproduced in my Paris-bought album. In the painting Freud's first wife Kitty (he was married several times and is said to father at least 20 children! Dan Farson famously said about the painter that 'like Svengali, he mesmerised women into capitulation') has her leg trapped by a cosying white bull-terrier:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucian_Freud

Coincidentally I am reading now Dodie Smith's I capture the Castle . I went and got the book after seeing a picture of Romola Garai who plays the main character in the film adaptation of the novel, sitting next to a white bull-terier in a crowded London cafe. (The name of the dog is not mentioned in the film at all, so to learn that she is called Heloise, you will have to read this excellent book.)

This is how white bul-terriers lead you with their slanty eyes and wet noses into some of the most favourite things in life.

Cows and seaside

A nice, SUNNY day that we spent in St Andrews, what an exception this summer, but note my canvas coat still being with me! I am finding cows to be rather intimidating but these were friendly and nostalgic, sending longing looks towards the sea, probably dreaming about sailing tall ships towards foreign, distant lands. I have always thought that after a long day in the field cows go home for a nice cuppa but no, they are being left on the field overnight, what a shame, missing so many great programmes on tv (BBC2 The Hour with Romola Garai and Ben Wishaw is on this week!).

 

Meeting with Sejin

Yesterday I have managed to spend a sunny afternoon (a treat in itself!) in a great company of my friend Sejin. It is good to catch up with her, exchange oppinions on girly things like handbags and make up but also on serious things as well (business and photography), it gives a good balance of well spent couple of hours: we have some enterntainment and coffee but also we exchanged some useful information and supported each other in this uber difficult task which is becoming an art photographer. It is really though out there, I am telling you (have you seen BBC documentary on Eddie Izzard's rise to fame? More than a decade of struggling, shaping ideas, loosing money and finally succeeding against all odds. I think that there is at least several years in front of me before I hit Wembley Arena, ups, I mean Gagosian Gallery haha!) so the more I appreciate this cute gift that Sejin got for me from her native Korea. It will be a pleasure to jot down the ideas for new projects in these notebooks! Thank you!

BTW, I have enlarged a bit of one of the covers, that shows an ideal office set up for a graphic designer/photographer/illustrator/image creative person!

Illustrations by Korean artist Seo Na-Rae:

Matrioszka reflection in a window of a tatoo salon in town

Current addiction

Not doing my waist size any good...

Remembering important things in the frenzy of everyday

It is way after midnight while I am writing this so technically the whole thing happened yesterday but for Simon and I, the 4th of July is our marriage anniversary!

Except that... I have completely forgotten about it! And my husband, who is usually the forgetfull one, got it absolutely right and when I returned home last evening this GORGEOUS bouquet was waiting for me on my work table (hence all the mess in the image's background). Oh, and I was also treated to a lovely meal in Brown's, which is where we had our wedding reception feast the next day after the ceremony in Oxford, now two years ago. Gosh, time flies indeed.

Wow, I must say I am VERY impressed and very much in love *blushes and jumps around the room, ups it is after midnight and I will annoy our neighbours* and I just hope that all our close friends and family who came all this way to participate in our nuptials, spared a thought about us yesterday. Let's meet all again in Brown's in Oxford, let's say, when Simon and I, we reach the 20th year bracket!

Hours

The number in the picture seems to state the number of hours (2289446) that Simon and I have worked last week but as usual on Sunday, I have an impression that everything is finally under control and we are able to cope with the workflow. Ha, we wish!