A Neighbour’s Imprint

Yesterday I was in London (in-between the strikes currently being inflicted on passengers travelling on Southern Rail by the Unions). I am still familiarising myself with the London terminus at which I now arrive – Victoria Station. A station whose immediate surroundings seem to have been a building site for years upon years. And each time I travel up to London I use a few spare minutes to walk the immediate area and shoot a few images.

Regular readers will know of my fascination with the way new buildings interact, due to the preponderance of glass as a cladding material. And here is one captured yesterday. A curved swathe of reflections from a neighbouring colossus.

It seems fitting to post this today because my reason for being in London yesterday was to see the current major art exhibition – Abstract Expressionism – at the Royal Academy. This huge exhibition has just over two more weeks left to run and is an embarrassment of riches featuring work by Gorky, Clyfford Still, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, de Kooning to name a few. The highlight for me were the vast canvases by Jackson Pollock especially Mural. Equally exciting was a minutely inscribed, calligraphic work by  Janet Sobel and a similar work by Lee Krasner (Pollock’s wife) who also painted a vast, poignant canvas The Eye is the First Circle in tribute to her deceased husband.

If you have the time and the energy, and London is within reach, then don’t miss this exhibition.

This exhibition, like others I recall, is an inspiration. I am reminded of a quote from Alain Briot, a well-known American photographer, writer and teacher: Creativity is an input-output, import-export business. You have to be in contact with other artists … in order to foster creativity’. So very true.