Cathy's Art Diary

Delightful exhibition at the Fleming Collection of work by Joseph Crawhall, a contemporary of the Glasgow Boys. The upper floor put him into context by showing work by the Glasgow Boys with some beautiful pictures such as The Bridge, Crowland by James Guthrie with lovely square brush strokes and an Arthur Melville of Cairo. Downstairs were the works by Crawhall himself starting a wonderful picture of a girl on a bicycle in water colour with spare brushstrokes and a dog running beside her to give a sense of speed. I loved the attached picture of a hunt with a sea of expressive dogs’ heads at the bottom and the huntsmen as lumps of red on the horses. I thought it had a feeling of William Nicholson prints. He was known for his pictures of horses, including two here of horses’ bottoms and for his whimsical works such as Road Hog in shades of grey and red of a fast car running down people and animals. He also spent a lot of time in Tangiers. Closes on 12 March 2016

Lovely exhibition at the Fleming Collection of photographs by Peter Catterell of how World War I battlefields look now. These started with a visit to the Somme in 1996 to mark 90 years since the battle and to see where is Great Uncle the water-colourist William Wyatt Bagshawe died. From there he went back to old Western Front battle fields and took beautiful peaceful pictures of the sites now. Many of the pictures show how the fields still show the scars on the fighting with the line of trenches and bomb explosions showing as undulations in the ground. I loved one of a harvested crop with the lines of stubble mirroring an arm on the march or the lines of gravestones. He also took close up still lives of items left from the fighting like pieces of barbed wire and shot bullets. These were almost abstract photographs but strangely moving to see a mangled bullet close up. Alongside this work were picture taken by George P. Lewis of women working during World War I which C...