Alain de Bottom Hay Festival

Swelltering heat but worthwhile.

Robert Winton

Is there a God gene? Robert Winton seems to think so. This raises the question: when we start to tamper with the human gene pool ( which we will) will we slelave out the God gene?

Has it already served its evolutionary purpose? at present they think about a quarter per cent of the population carry this gene.

Antony Gormley

Here's an artist with a very serious message and highly articulate too. The interviewer was almost unnecesary inthis case.He talked about his latest installation in Western Australia working with Aborigines. Very cerebral yet with excellent communication skills.

Tony Parsons

I love his work, and the audience clearly did too. Pity he comes across as such a cold fish

Al Gore

Former American Vice President toklsd asome very funny stories against himself before getting down to the serious business of promoting care for the environment.

Steve Jones Hay Book Festival

Arguing the case for evolution versus creationism, Steve Jones played a recording of the Queen making a speech during her late teens and one of Prince Harry, two generations later, to show how language evolves.
Steve Jones later signed copies of his new book TheSingle Helix

Howerd Hodgkin Hay Book Festival

He may be a great artist but Howerd Hodgkin is an interviewer's nightmare!...Simon Schama did his best but the score at the end of rthe day was ana outright win to Hodgkin, this man believes in privacy and he sure had no intention of letting anyone into this privat thought processes or life for that at Tate Britain.

As people started to walk out - fed up with HH refusal to giveany decent replies to questions apart from "yes", "no" "maybe"
"I have nothing to say" his consciencwe must have pricked him cause he turned to Schama and said:"Ithink you ought to open it up to questions from the floor."He did and people wanted to know why we couldnot see any images of HH work.
Answer:he refused to allow the Festival to show any......
still I have a grudging admiration for his refusal to play the publicity game.

Secuestro Express -Hay Book Festival

Alarming film from Venezuela- a must see should this ever come on to the British circuit.

It's about the modern phenomena of kidnapping , rampant in Caracas where two thirds of the population live in poverty and one third in extreme wealth.

Kidnapping is the modern way of surviving and most families have experience of it, including the director of this film, Jonathon Jakubowicz. He made the film to try and understand the mentality of the kidnappers and at the event it was very clear why they did it: to survive.

In a country rife with corruption, including the police, this film kicks the Hay Festival off to a sombre start:this year there is an emphasis on the environment.

Hay Book Festival

Have just heard Maggi Hambling speak. A fearsome character! had thought of getting a book signed by her but the thought of meeting her terrified me. She was onstage with her dog. As for the interviewer, Sarah Rothchild, the poor woman was made to feelk like a naughty six year old.

Scotland's Open Gardens- Bridge of Allan

Well, we are part of a group of four in Bridge of Allan who have just opened our garden for the first time to the public.

Now there is nothing like the thought of several hundred people inspecting your garden to cause you to hurry up and finish off all those odd jobs that have been lurking around for months, well, years in some cases.

The national charity,Scotland's Gardens Scheme, started 75 years ago inviting people to open up their gardens as a novel form of fund-raising and it has proved to be hugely successful.

We were gobsmacked to be asked. A few years ago ours was the proverbial "garden from hell"- wooded, north facing, steep slopes with the added bonus of deer and rabbits who ate everything. It was a nightmare to turn around. Maybe because it was so difficult that led us to find some unconventional solutions.
Well here's the result.




On Sunday afternoon we invited friends to help out including our next door neighbour, John Gray, who found himself directing traffic for four hours non-stop!- not bad for an octogenarian.



We had thought this would just be a local event but we found people came from all over the central belt: Glasgow, Alloa, Aberfeldy, Falkirk, Brig O'Turk, Yetts of Muchart, Larbert, Stirling,Drymen, Fintry,Kippen, Gargunnock, Dunfermline and even a visitor from Australia!



Afterwards we all agreed that the open day had been a great success despite a big traffic holdup on the motorway near Stirling causing tailbacks for several hours.

And the oldest visitor was a 96 year old woman who took great pride in naming the plants she recognized.

Oh yes, and the afternoon raised over £1,000 for Strathcarron hospice.

Postcards in the studio

I like to keep postcards in my studio of work I have recently seen. These two images are from my recent visit to Amsterdam. The original of Floris Van Dijck's "Still Life with cheeses" had a maggot crawling along the table and some gigantic flies on the white cloth but in all the reproductions these have been digitally removed!

The drawing is, of course, by Rembrandt of a "Lion Resting".

Glasgow Art Fair

Well, I guess a couple of visits to Glasgow Art Fair this past weekend made me decide to completely change the way I use my online blog. No longer am I going to write about other people's art but its going to be my own.
What caused this change? well strolling around gallery after gallery of paintings I felt I had stepped back in time. Who buys this stuff? what does it have to say about the world we live in today?
Sure its decorative- so is Ikea and Habitat and at a fraction of the price.

Rembrandt-Caravaggio exhibition, Amsterdam

Hotel Aalders, Amsterdam- just the place to stay if you want a quiet family run hotel close to the museums. The Rijks and Van Gogh museums are one block away.
So, we are doing all the cultural stuff, the big Rembrandt-Caravaggio exhibition, the permanent Van Gogh ( long queues everywhere but I had taken the precaution of booking online).
Yes its spectacular and after all the conceptual stuff its good to be brought face to face with solid works of art that have withstood the test of time.

About the paintings (starting from the top):
Rembrandt- "The rape of Ganymede" (detail) (1635)
Rembrandt- "The night watch"
Caravaggio -"The betrayal of Christ" (1602)

Net Art- Tate Online

Have just been playing online with the latest piece of netart, Screening Circle, by Andy Deck available from Tate Online It is a metaphorical reference to the quilting circle, or what is known as the quilting bee, popular in the US during the 19th century among women living in rural areas.

Now the ideas has been fastforwarded into the 21st century .

Grow in peace

Nick Ford installs his stone text piece in the garden this morning. It complements the acorn he built earlier in the background.

This is a site-specific piece designed in conjunction with Nick and the aim is to create an experience of peacefulness and silence under the canopy of the fir trees yet reflecting the organic nature of the garden too.

Adobe Roadshow

Just back from the Adobe "Fully Loaded" roadshow in Glasgow where they showed the latest software in their Adobe Production Studio suite. I found the most interesting section was the Photoshop because the video editing was all on Premiere and PC- while I am Apple and Final Cut Express.

One of the most interesting new developments for photographers is the Adobe Lightroom Beta. This will be shipped later in the year for both PCs and Apple , meanwhile those of us with Apple can download a copy for free to test drive it. This piece of software has been developed in response to the huge demand from professional photographers .


Felt guilty afterwards buying a copy of a daily newspaper. It seemed so..er...uncool.

Can string be called art?

I have every sympathy with Mike Russell writing in today's The Herald on contemporary art.
He says:
"It may be that the visual arts are simply going through a period of profound change, and that eventually we will see our world more clearly as a result.
"Or it may be that there are a lot of creative lemmings around, charging up artistic cul-de-sacs while demanding that the rest of us follow them to the future."

As a fairly recent graduate who came into this scene late after a lifetime in journalism I know how he feels.
Well, I recall one student in art history asking a very distinguished art historian this question;
"How come something bought in a junk shop and displayed in an art gallery suddenly becomes a work of art?"
She replied:
"It's art if you say it is art."
So there.

Sculptures take on a new life

Following the worst snowstorm for nearly 30 years the sculptures in my garden have taken on a whole new meaning.

Edinburgh versus Glasgow

Spent yesterday in Glasgow after visiting Edinburgh last week and am struck yet again at the difference between the two cities. Edinburgh seems to be like an emotionally constipated old lady while Glasgow is young, gallus, free and easy with a sense of joie de vivre.

Saw a couple of exhibitions including Luke Fowler at The Modern Institute, watched his film "The Scratch Orchestra". Interesting. Well, I sat for 40 minutes through it. The Gallery of Modern Art has an exhibition of landscape work from their permanent collection. Only two did anything for me- S. Salgado and Andy Goldsworthy.

Ice Blink a newe exhibition by Simon Faithfull is at the Stills gallery in Edinburgh. Worth a visit.

New Media Scotland

Went to the bi-monthly evening seminars at Dundee Contemporary Arts where Jon Thomson and Alison Craighead were doing a presentation. Their work is web based .
Says Thomson:
" You are physically here but virtually everwhere."

Had a chat with Cezanne Charles, director of New Media Scotland , about our proposed online collective, an idea that came out of our recent Art+Tech Stirling conference. Over 20 people have signed up saying they are interested in a New Media collective. Question is: do we make it online/virtual?