Saturday, May 21, 2011

Bookmarks and a stroll around town

This is what is on my table this morning:



One bookmark design finished and the next at the assemblage-and-chopping-and-changing stage. And the book I borrowed last week, Haworth Harvest by N Brysson Morrison which is an enjoyable and untaxing read, devoid of the dreaded footnote disease and full of interesting little nuggets. I just wish it didn't smell of old (this is one of my daughters' most withering descriptions). Or should that be wuthering?


I called in at our local modern art museum the day before yesterday and was pleasantly surprised to find the collection had been changed since last time when I must say the preponderence of crusty, dusty fifties and sixties abstracts in various shades of mud and deterioration had detained me less than 10 minutes.


This time around I was bowled over by two tiny Eileen Agar pastels, one of which is below:


Not a very good reproduction I'm afraid as I was taking the photo undercover. In real life the colours sang out and here they look more like they are doing more of a bit of a muffled hum. Agar spent the winter in Puerto de la Cruz for several years in the 1950s. As did another British painter I admire, Dot Procter. 
And here is another picture I was taken with, by Canary Island artist Lola Massieu:


The collection is housed in a beautiful 17th century mansion overlooking the fishing port, and was once the local customs house. It deserves to be better known and better visited. Unfortunately it suffers from another disease I am averse to (see above), namely acronym disease. The letters MACEW will mean absolutely nothing to 99% of people but that is the big sign under which the building labours (standing for Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Eduardo Westendahl). So potential visitors who don't go a bundle on figuring out word games simply pass it by. There was just one other person strolling around when I went in. 
The woman on the desk, who was very knowledgeable about the paintings and artists, seemed touchingly pleased to see us.

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