Thursday 14 December 2017

A New Showcase

One of Georgina's most evocative images has just been selected as among
the 15 artists who have won a space in the 

Mixed Media Winners Video

created by Artists Info.

Here is the link to the video:


Vizzavona, Corsica.  Beeches in snow.
Prints of this image are available in two sizes:
A Limited Edition of 12 at 53cm x 53cm
A Limited Edition of 6 at 100cm x 100cm

Printed on heavyweight Fine Art Rag paper 310gsm using Canon's
archival pigment inks.

Numbered and Signed and with a Certificate of Authenticity.

Prints of this image are also offered for sale through online galleries that represent me:

https://www.artgallery.co.uk/work/239266 

https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Photography-Winter-Forest-Vizzavona-Corsica-Large-Limited-Edition-2-of-6/765626/3898109/view

In my opinion Corsica shares, with the West of Scotland, the distinction of being one of
the most atmospheric places on earth.  The Col de Vizzavona joins the North and South
parts of Corsica.  Coming over the pass one day in snow, I stopped to walk through the
beech woods near the road.  Perfect peace.  A relaxing simplicity and only about four
colours.  In the snow some of the trees were clinging to a few of their autumn leaves
like well-placed decorations.  I couldn't resist the temptation to simplify the view even
further and am intrigued by all the little 'creatures' and strange figures that, with a little
imagination, I can see among the trees.

Tuesday 5 December 2017

New On-line Gallery

Georgina is now represented on another on-line gallery 
Artgallery.co.uk
and has been busy 
for the last week or so uploading work onto the site.

To see the work please visit:

 




Sunday 5 November 2017

Latest Exhibition


We are also represented by Saatchi Art:

Note:  The exhibition has now been extended to the end of 
January 2018

 

Living in the Diois


We live in the Diois  -  la France Profonde.  Sometimes it's frustrating to live in 
an area so thinly populated and hence so far from many of the services and
luxuries that town dwellers take for granted.  Little choice for entertainment,
particularly eating out, limited medical facilities and few live cultural events.
But then, both as a discipline and as a pleasure, we justify one of our original reasons
for coming here by walking with a group of Châtillonais, (members of the
Association Fleurs & Fontaines), every Wednesday afternoon.
The walks have the multiple functions of reminding us that we live in some of the world's  most magnificent walking country, largely unspoiled, unpolluted and almost empty, that our
intentions to take regular long walks are too often thwarted by other commitments, but that, on Wednesday afternoon we must drop everything and go.  Last but not least the group's real purpose is to take secateurs and shears to keep the walking paths open.  The
benefits are obvious and help us to keep fit in body and soul.

In the past we have always preferred to walk on our own and we still do when we are looking for new subjects for our prints.  But the group is not merely a discipline but a
very agreeable one.  We learn a lot from the local people who know these mountains and
their history and know and can identify the plants and explain the geology and much more.
It's enriching and amusing and does a great deal to help us with the French language. 

The Diois is in the Drôme near to the border with the Isère Département.  It is an
administrative district surrounding the town of Die. Châtillon-en-Diois, where we live, is about 15 Km further into the unknown at the foot of the majestic cliffs of Glandasse
which is the southern tip of the Vercors Pleateau.  The climate is not quite Provençal but
very nearly.  We have plenty of sunshine all the year round with hot summers and sometimes quite cold winters, plenty of snow and plenty of seasonal variation.  The
wild life is fabulous and around the village we see wild boar, deer, foxes, badgers, three
species of vulture, eagles and other raptors, herons, snakes, gorgeous lizards, enormous toads and even wolves.  The list is endless.
Here are just a few glimpses of the country we walk in and the people we walk with.  They
are all very fit and keep us on our toes.


Serge Baude.  Our 'Chef'















 
The sun doesn't always shine



Wednesday 20 September 2017

New Image on Saatchi Art


We are also represented by Saatchi Art.  Please visit:


Our Papua New Guinea prints on Saatchi Art are proving extremely 
popular and we have just added this image to the growing
list.

This man on his way home in the rain sums up a lot of the characteristics
that we found so attractive about the New Guinea Highlanders when we lived 
there between 1970 and 1973.  

Normally calm and philosophical the Highlanders accepted strange and, at that time, relatively rare foreigners and their cameras despite having almost certainly never seen a
photograph of themselves.  If need be, they would climb into planes or
helicopters without any outward sign of doubt.  And yet they lived from the land
and found practical solutions to their day to day necessities, such as this interesting
use for a giant fig leaf umbrella.


To see more of our images please visit our website or Saatchi Art,
links above.

Saturday 19 August 2017

Exhibition at the Monastery of Sainte Croix


We are also represented by Saatchi Art:



"Changing With The Times"

19th August  -  14th September 2017

Open every day from 10am to 5pm

Permanences de l’Artiste:
Mardi 22 août 10h30 à 12h30
Vernissage:  le Vendredi 25 août à partir de 18h00
Samedi 26 août de 15h00 à 17h00
Mardi 29 août et Vendredi 1 septembre de 10h30 à 12h30
Vendredi 8 septembre de 15h00 à 17h00
Mardi 12 septembre de 10h30 à 12h30
Ou téléphonez pour prendre rendez-vous au Monastère
Tel: 04 75 21 88 37

 


We'd love to see you all at our
Vernissage: Friday, 25th August at 6 pm

On 19th August we hung 33 of our framed, Limited Edition, prints at the
Monastery of Sainte Croix in the Vallée de Quint near Die.
The exhibition occupies two long, spacious, airy hallways reminiscent
of cloisters but with windows rather than open arches.  The light
is generally excellent and our unglazed prints are evenly and 
agreeably lit by daylight.

We chose the title "Changing With the Times" to allow us to exhibit
a variety of subjects from our earliest work in Papua New Guinea,
through the industrial work which occupied a lot of our career, with
the majority reflecting our more recent landscape and minimalist work  -
an eclectic mixture.  All but one of the prints were framed by 
us in our workshop. 

We are, of course, in the business of photography and of making and 
printing Limited Editions.  Our frames are designed to display the
pictures to what we consider to be their best advantage.  However,
we obviously have a preference for the sale of unframed prints which
buyers can frame according to their own taste.





Tuesday 8 August 2017

More of a New Series


We are also represented by Saatchi Art:


In our blog of 30th May we posted 
"And Venus Rises Red"
which Georgina intended to be the beginning of a new series of abstract images
similarly constructed but around different themes. Since then, we have been printing,
framing and setting up exhibitions day and night and so the sequel has taken rather
longer than intended.
Here are two more images to add to this series and it is intended that there
will be more when our current and upcoming exhibitions are over in mid-September.
It will be a breath of fresh air to have more time to be creative.

And the Moon Rises Blue


 
And the Sun Rises yet Rust Decays


Monday 31 July 2017

Festival Arts & Vigne, Châtillon-en-Diois 2017


We are also represented by Saatchi Art:

On Sunday, 6th August, the 
Festival Arts & Vigne 2017
opens in Châtillon.
This is our sixth Festival and the second time that we will be exhibiting
in our own gallery adjacent to our house.  
The Village Gallery is fun and full of character but here we have an
established gallery and have decided not to use precious space in the
village and give ourselves the additional task of moving pictures,
lighting and ourselves.  Our gallery is a few minutes' walk from the centre
of the village.  Or, alternatively, a couple of minutes' drive (we have plenty
of parking).
We've found ourselves with a lot of exhibitions this year, perhaps rather too
many given the work involved.  But it's good to have been invited and 
difficult to refuse.  Later in August we have an exhibition at the
Ancien Monastère de Ste. Croix, just outside Die.  And in November we
will be exhibiting in Grenoble. 
Of course, our gallery will always be open when we are here and we usually are. 


We hope to see lots of friends, old and new, chez-nous.  We have
a lot of interesting work on display.

Monday 24 July 2017

The Forbidden City


Since our exhibition at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco, six years ago, 
"Regards sur la Papouasie Nouvelle Guinéé"
we have been lucky enough to be invited to the opening of each year's
summer exhibition.
We remember how impressed we were by the "Japan" exhibition of 2010 and simply could not resist visiting Monaco for their  
"The Forbidden City" exhibition this year. 
We have been to The Forbidden City in Beijing several times ourselves, the first time in 1985, and wanted to renew and enrich the experience. 
We knew that the Grimaldi Forum's exhibition would be superlative, and it was. 
The icon of the exhibition was a portrait of the Emperor Kangxi
which was used as the cover of the accompanying catalogue and
the invitation.


We recommend this exhibition to anyone who has the chance to pass that way.

Our exhibition, now six years ago, (time flies) was promoted by a poster 
from one of our favourite images of a bride in one of the villages
of the Lai Valley near Mendi in the Southern Highlands of
Papua New Guinea.


We continue to work on and to offer limited edition prints from
our Papua New Guinea collection.  Please visit our
website to see more.  Or, should you have the opportunity,
visit our Summer Exhibition at our Gallery in
Châtillon-en-Diois in France where we live.

Monday 26 June 2017

Ethereal





We're rushed off our feet at the moment which is nothing new.  We've been printing and framing new and existing work and preparing our Gallery for our new exhibition and the Festival Arts & Vigne, an annual event in Chatillon in August.

Predictably, the Gallery is spreading into the house where we have some large and convenient walls which will be very necessary at the end of this week when we wrap up our current exhibition in Chabeuil.  

Our garden here is being neglected but it still contributes a lot of pleasure
and, at the moment, a lot of soft fruit despite our vicious Spring
frosts this year.  The garden has also contributed some splendid Tulip seed
heads which Georgina dried a few years ago and has now transformed into a new and ethereal print.  Perhaps the beginning of yet another new series.




 

Friday 16 June 2017

Our Latest Exhibition in our Gallery at La Conche


Summer has arrived with a vengeance and we have been busy printing and
framing some of our less familiar work.  And now we are as ready as
we ever will be and have some great pictures on show in our
Gallery de La Conche -  Summer Exhibition 2017.

Monday 12 June 2017

An Evening to Remember: 4th June

Having passed the last few weeks in a frenzy of preparation  -  printing, framing, experimenting and editing our work for upcoming exhibitions  -  we didn't seem to have time for anything else.  The grass in the garden was about 50cm tall and was in need of urgent attention and some of it still is.

However, a few months ago we received a routine e-mail announcing local concerts which, though some of them seemed tempting, had always fallen foul of the 'always too busy' syndrome.  That's a pity.  We know it's a pity.  Perhaps
it's a modern disease to become involved with so much that one is always too busy.  Or perhaps this is a reflection of those wonderful days when some people, we believe, had staff.  Or at least you could employ somebody locally for a reasonable hourly wage without the fear of vicious official retribution.  Anyway, that's the way it is.  We had already persuaded ourselves that the Wednesday afternoon walks we take with the local association - Fleurs & Fontaines - which keeps open the walking paths around here and plants up the village as if it were their own garden - were more or less sacrosanct.  How much more time can one find?

The Evening to Remember took place on 4th June but then of course we've been too busy to even write anything down.  We need music and we've built up a quite impressive collection of CDs and DVDs, particularly of opera, and had settled for canned music at home as, after all, we do live in La France Profonde, several hours away from the nearest opera house and, in other respects, worlds away.  And, of course, we don't think we're alone in having become quite choosy about what we listen to, perhaps even slightly snobbish.  Standards of recorded music are so high today.

But when the name of Gabriel Garrido appeared on the routine e-mail coupled with Purcell's Dido & Aeneas and, to boot, the performance would be in a chapel just over the hill from here at Recoubeau, we had to go.  And we were right.  It was a perfectly blissful evening.

The chapel is quite small and a creaky stage had been added with a curtain at the back and that was about it.  That was enough.  Dido is an intimate opera and depends for its impact on a certain intimacy with the performers as what it lacks in profundity it makes up for many times over in every day human emotions, communicated to the audience, any audience.  We were particularly fortunate that our early booking gave us two of the best seats in the house.

Gabriel Garrido, Conductor/Director, had recreated a partially preserved Prologue composed by Purcell and he used other familiar Purcell music to add a certain amount of length and weight to the performance.  Indeed, during the performance Mr. Garrido added some delightful touches of his own including a very clever storm interlude partially enacted by the musicians with astonishing 'creaking boat' sound effects.  Other additional pleasures were guitar solos written for Daniel Morais (who was also playing the Theorbe) in the style of Purcell.

The Prologue was lovely setting the scene for the opera and we were not to be disappointed.  Isabelle Fallot makes a lovely Dido, looking and sounding in every way the part and bringing across the emotions to the audience with a conviction that one is not often lucky enough to experience.  Vincent Billier, Aeneas and her real life husband, with his resonant Base Baritone and his total involvement in the part filled the chapel with sound and emotion.  Marie-Laure Coenjaerts as Belinda, sang wonderfully and, again, put across her part with an intimacy so rare and simply not available from our canned music.  Katarina Vukadinovic, as the Enchantress, with her huge contralto, seemed to threaten the structure and put across more than just voice power.

There were no disappointments.  All performers were tremendous.  No less the musicians than the singers.  And Pavel Amilcar, the leader of the 8-strong orchestra was impressive both in his playing, his part in the direction and, in many ways, as an organiser of the event.

The opera is short but just right.  The quality of the performance, the singing and the playing were of the first order by any standards.  And there was hardly a dry eye in the house.  For critical anglophones, the performance was also a delight because of the impeccable English and outstanding diction of and understanding by the singers.

It was one of those rare events in life that uplift the spirit and reassure us that, even at the worst of times, life is definitely worth living and that culture and music are at the centre of our humanity  -  to be ignored, under-funded or derided at our peril.  We will be taking more notice of upcoming events in future.  Canned music, to some degree, protects us from one of the most alarming realities of our culture.  As the performers get younger and better and better, the audiences seem to be getting older and sparser with no doubt a profusion of hearing-aids to help with their enjoyment.  What can be done about this sad situation.

A personal Thank You to all the organisers and especially Dominique Wostyn
and l'Opera en Famille.
 

Friday 2 June 2017

Exhibition at Chabeuil 2nd June to 30th June 2017


Yesterday we set up our exhibition at
 in Chabeuil, Drome, France.

The culmination of a lot of work, we took some weary snapshots before
dragging ourselves home, tired but very pleased with how the
exhibition looked.
Our thanks to our hosts, the proprietors of the bookshop Ecriture, who
not only offered us the opportunity of exhibiting in their gallery but also
 played a large part in the hanging of the pictures and
 anticipated and solved a lot of our problems before we realised
that we had them.
In real life, there is a lot to see in the exhibition - these photographs
do it less than justice.

"Cela vaut le détour !"






Sunday 14 May 2017

Exhibition in June


Last year the proprietors of L'Ecriture, which is a splendid bookshop
in Chabeuil near Valence in the Drome and which has has a very nice gallery,
invited us to exhibit some of our photographs there.
We are setting up the exhibition at the end of May and it will be open from
2nd June to 30 June during the bookshop's opening hours.

The theme is 
"All the World's a Stage"
freely translated as:
"Le Monde Entier est un Theatre" 

We will be exhibiting about 24 prints on canvas and paper framed or
stretched on the theme of trees, nature and intimate landscapes.  And we are
including two prints, each one metre square mounted on Dibond, originating from Georgina's minimalist collection.

We will be hosting a Vernissage at 18h00 on 9th June and hope that all those
who are able to do so will be there.
Below are the two posters that we have prepared.



Monday 24 April 2017

Old and New



We are also represented by Saatchi Art:


We sometimes go through phases of preferring black & white or very restrained colours and that has been the recent trend for us. 

While walking in a local forest we saw this old oak which gave the
impression of having been carefully shaped, or at least it had
managed to grow in a very pleasing form.


We were looking through some old files and noticed a couple of Papua New Guinea photos, taken at the beginning of the 1970s, because they made us smile.
And they still do.

We were always impressed by the PNG Highlanders not least because of
their fearless acceptance of something new.  The life of a Highlander
at that time required a good deal of self-confidence and resilience which is
probably one of the best reasons for these people having maintained their
agricultural civilisation for around 4,000 years.


When we were in the Highlands the village people still maintained their
healthy and almost pristine culture.  But then, occasionally, an
adornment from the Western ways that were beginning to arrive proved an
irresistible addition to a headdress largely of Bird of Paradise feathers.  One can only speculate as to why this man chose a magazine
portrait of Elizabeth Taylor.

 

Wednesday 22 March 2017

A Change of Scene



We are also represented by Saatchi Art:

All the pictures on our blogs are available as prints, usually in Limited Editions.

A  long time ago we had a lavishly equipped studio in Edinburgh where we spent
most of our time - day and night - photographing whisky bottles, beer and
booze generally, for advertising and point-of-sale.  The work was difficult, 
demanding and, unfortunately, by the time we had taught ourselves the
essentials, it became tedious.  That was a pity as it was lucrative.  Life seemed
too short to worry, day in and day out, about the light coming through
a whisky bottle or the size and composition of the head on a glass
of beer.

One day a client asked us to supply a set of photographs for a 'Rum' calendar which
was intended for display in pubs along the east coast of Scotland and the north of 
England.  The obvious subject would be girls.  We were delighted to have a change
of scene and the calendar was successful.  As we were also building up a large stock
photography archive, we saw the chance to hire models from time to time to generate
stock pictures for our agencies.

Naturally, many of the pictures of our models were taken in our well-equipped studio.
But we always preferred working outdoors and we took the opportunity to take models
to some of our favourite Scottish locations.  We took models to Argyll and Fife and the
picture above of Carol was taken on Sandwood Bay, one of the finest beaches we have
ever seen, right up in the north west corner of Scotland.  In those days it was two or three
miles' walk from the nearest road.  Now we hear that, alas, you can drive there.  That day, we had the beach to ourselves, miles of it.

A change of scene beckons again and we saw the opportunity to use some of those original shots as an artist uses his sketch book, or nowadays his photographs, as a basis for
a new work.  That's what we have been doing and we are enjoying the work and
pleased with the results.