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Plea For a Pear Tree

Development Planning
City of Westminster
Westminster City Hall
64 Victoria Street
London
SW1E 6QP

I object to the application for the removal of the Pear Tree in the back garden of 37 Newton Road, W2 5JR.
I love this Pear Tree; every morning I look at it from out of the window to see how it is. It hurts me to see it mistreated (in the past couple of years some savage “pruning” has been inflicted on it – inept tree surgery – which to put right and repair the damage caused by the previous cutting back has removed the south-facing leaf canopy to expose the moss and lichen on the main branches and trunk to the full force of the sun for the first time in decades).
To think of this venerable tree being wantonly cut down breaks my heart.
I do not own this tree, it was growing there before I was born and if tended to and cared for could be growing there after I die.
The present owners of the Pear Tree want to kill it now for the sake of the studio/study they mean to build at the bottom of the garden. A house, independent of the main residence, with its door opening onto the next street. The perception some people I have spoken to have is that this is clearly an investment opportunity which maximises the assets that the property can realise. [Read more…]

Rome

December 2012

Was back in Rome in early December, with students for two days and on my own for another three days, drawing. Filled a couple of sketchbooks (one, long and thin, and the other, big and square) as well as a folded-sheet, which turned out quite well. Happy to say, one of the better ones; the way the drawings relate and interconnect across the page. Partly, because I was using different materials to picture the scenes, the rhythm of textures and spaces (between the drawings) happen to weave an interrupted optical pattern over the surface, which together with the changing near-and-far viewpoints, all chance to strike the intriguing visual balance we like the folded sheets to have. [Read more…]

George Noskov, Russian poet

November 2012

My friend, George Noskov, had five of his short plays performed at Teatro Technis in Camden Town, London. I got a call from the director, George Eugeniou, when the plays were already in rehersal, asking if I would be able to put some drawings up as a little exhibition in the theatre foyer. Possibly some portraits of the poet? Invited over to talk about it; I turned up while the actors were in full swing, and being signalled to go over to sit next to the director on the couch in the middle of the room, I watched a run-through of two of the plays. Then, calling a break the director introduced me to the company as an artist…, who’s kindly going to hang some pictures etc etc .., and a very good friend of Noskov who will now tell you all about him.     Eh!? That woke me. [Read more…]

Aldous in Istanbul

Vimeo

In Berlin over the weekend to see my friends Mary and Markus Gertkin, Markus was wondering where he could find my motion-painting film of Istanbul – at the site above.

Made a portrait book while I was there (book number 54 in the Portrait Pages series) and some other watercolours and drawings while wandering around in a separate sketch-book.