Everybody to Kenmure Road (2026): review: 3/10

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Documentary tracing events in a Glasgow street when the Home Office attempt to arrest two foreign men, presumably for not having appropriate visas.

Neighbours and locals protest, successfully preventing their removal in a van. The crowds are joined by local politicians.

The documentary attempts to contextualise these events withing Glasgow`s history as a radical city.

The presentation of events is entirely celebratory. No effort is made to question the legitimacy of the collective action, or the reasons for the arrest of the two men: sentimentality prevails. 

The film is watchable, however, reminiscent somehow of Ealing films such as Passport to Pimlico.

Roofs, Sidi Ifni and A view from the Necropolis, Glasgow, framed

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Roofs, oil on card, 12.2 x 15.5 cm, framed  SOLD

 A view from the Necropolis, Glasgow, oil on card, 13 x 18 cm, framed  SOLD

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British Trip, 2019 - Glasgow, travel and painting

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Paintings from Glasgow

 A bridge over the River Kelvin, oil on card, c. 28 x 24 cm unavailable

Trees, River Kelvin, Glasgow

 oil on card, c. 19 x 17 cm    SOLD

This, above, was photographed in its carrier and you can perhaps make out the pegs holding it in place/

 A synagogue, Glasgow, oil on card, c. 18 x 22 cm  aVAILABLE

My  last picture was painted from the south side, specifically Cook Street, on a brilliantly sunny day.

Warehouse, Cook street, oil on card, c. 24 x  29 cm - unavailable

My time painting in Glasgow was hampered by rain- a real pity as I would have enjoyed having had more time to explore this strange city, so full of absences,  in painting. Ergo, I spent my time in Art Galleries and wandering around. I shall post some photos of these visits later. 

But all the trips are incomplete, necessarly so, every place having an infinity of facets and my own subjectivities varying besides. For this reason I have been exploring fewer and fewer completely new places, instead revisiting to add to existing explorations. 

In the context of such thoughts, I question the upcoming Ecuador trip, wondering if it might be wiser to go back to Peru to revisit previous locations. There is an additional argument for revisiting, which is that a large part of what is stressful about travel revolves around basic matters such as finding hotels, orientating oneself and suchlike, and these travails are lessened.

 I am a rotten traveler and dislike much of the experience. But I`d rather travel than stagnate artistically or in character .

Please note that as these pictures are in Scotland, and I forgot to measure them, I have only approximate sizes for them. The margin of error is low, however..

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Glasgow

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Alexander "Greek" Thomson`s Caledonia Road Church
 -taken from Gavin Stamp`s book (Lawrence King 1999)

Glasgow

Places to visit this time...

I`m pleased to be going to the south side. I see that I can walk along White Cart Water from Pollock House passing Holmwood House to Snuff Mill Bridge in Cathcart. The distance is just under 8 miles so it is best to do it over a whole day with lunch on the middle, or even over two days, as there are the buildings themselves to explore. Polock House has some an El Greco.

I cannot quite"get" the scale of Glasgow. It is very grandly planned, with some huge buildings, and it doesn`t seem suited for idly strolling. The areas outside the listed Victorian centre can be spectacularly bleak. London seems more human-scaled, and New York seems to invite wandering more too. 

I tried working from the buildings of Thomson`s buildings before, believing their deeply sculptural forms would translate well into painting, but if the sun isn`t strong their sculptural qualities lose out to the patchy effect where clean stones break up the sootiness on their facades. It can also be challenging to find an easy place to work from, but perhaps I`ll be more fortunate this time.

I have always found Glasgow to be an extremely mysterious place, perhaps partly because so much of it was demolished and because it`s economic purpose was lost. So one can feel when wandering about Glasgow that one is  looking at a faded photograph, with some parts lost to time. That`s one reason why I love A Very Quiet Street, by Frank Kuppner- it deals with the past, with architecture and equivocation. 

Holmwood House (Alexander "Greek" Thomson)
Pollock House (Art Collection and park)
Caledonia Road Church (Alexander "Greek" Thomson).

I am also looking at walking along the River Kelvin.

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A trip to Scotland and Canterbury

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Argyll and Bute

My pictures sold well at the last Society of Scottish artists exhibition and I want to produce more Scottish works. These will all be larger- about 30 x 25 cm.

Hence Oban in August, a small, touristic town on the West Coast that should provide, within easy reach, a good variety of views. I`ll also visit Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen, and in the south, Canterbury and London.

I`ll be showing work with Jane Rutherford at the Porty Art Walk festival, in Portobello near Edinburgh, where Jane and her husband Mark Haddon have a gallery (6-15 September).

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April in Britain and France: Part Three: Glasgow

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 Shop fronts, West End, Glasgow, oil on card, 14 x 15.5 cm  SOLD

 A close, Glasgow, oil on card, 14 x 16 cm

 A view from the Necropolis, Glasgow, oil on card, 13 x 18 cm  SOLD

A bridge near Glasgow Green, oil on card, 16 x 13 cm  -   available

Factory along the Clyde, Glasgow, oil on card, 15 x 16 cm -  -unavailable

I spent five days in Glasgow, mostly in the West End. I'd always felt very ignorant about Glasgow, having grown up and studied in Aberdeen and Edinburgh and there being a strangely exaggerated antipathy between East and West coast in Scotland, despite, or perhaps because of, their proximity.

Most of my thoughts about Glasgow were formed by a few childhood visits, by Frank Kuppner's A Very Quiet Street, and books about architects Alexander "Greek" Thomson and Charles Rennie  Mackintosh and my notions were somewhat romantic. 

I wasn't disappointed. it's a fine painting city: spaciously laid out with great views. There are few tourists. It doesn't feel like a huge museum, and yet it has a clear identity.The weather was delightful. People left me in peace to work, or were friendly without being overbearing. There are lovely little cafes and places to eat.

It's a  schizophrenic city: the West End and centre is genteel, with magnificent 19th century apartment blocks, museums and charming cafes, while the rest of the city appears to be in a post Imperial, post-industrial condition, with empty land free for construction and a sense of incompletion. This makes it a marvelous subject, and I enjoyed painting from the Necropolis, and along the Clyde.

The first picture is one of the best of this year: economical and cool.

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April in Britain and France: Part One: London

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 Hampstead Heath, oil on card, 18 x 16 cm   SOLD

 Berkeley Square, North side, oil on card, 17.5 x 17 cm   AVAILABLE

The colours here are gaudier than is truly the case

 Here are my first offerings from April's painting trip, which took me from Brazil to London, then to Paris, to Scotland, Somerset and back to Brazil via London.

London is not a good painting city. It lacks dramatic landscapes. The weather is both bland and unpredictable and the season changes lack force. The architecture is often good, but is also often fussy or indecisive, as is the street plan which rarely accommodates grandeur. And the city is uncontained,  rolling lazily in from endless suburbs and shires, undefined.

At the same time it lacks the sort of street life that makes Morocco, say, fascinating. In London, the private is utterly hidden. It cannot be intimate with you. It's true that you can sometimes get interesting views into the backs of people's gardens from railway lines but its hard ever to be able to find a place to paint them. And they aren't that fascinating anyway.

I never really "got" London, though I lived there for ten years, I seldom found it mysterious or enchanting except in old books or through the eyes of others such as writers like Ian Sinclair or painters such as Auerbach, though I came to love the more obscure stretches of Kensington and Bayswater. But most of it makes me shrug my shoulders.

Princes Square, Bayswater, oil on card, 14.5 x 16 cm  - available

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Many thanks to Lise and Felix for their generous hospitality in Westbourne Grove.

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New York II: East Village, Brooklyn, Morningside Heights, and outside the Public Library

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These are pictures from less systematic perambulations. It is difficult in such an intensively commercial zone as Manhattan to find places to sit and work peacefully: this is partly why I spent so much time exploring Queens, though another reason is simply that it is, I find, better creatively to explore a smaller area with some concentration, than a wider area superficially.

A Chinese Restaurant, East Village, oil on card, 11.5 x 14 cm

I loved the rectangularity of everything, as if the work were a vast three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle composed from square and rectangular pieces: it suits my somewhat blocky style.

 Outside the library, Manhattan, oil on card, 10.5 x 14.5 cm  - available

Washington Square, Manhattan, N.Y., oil on card, 14.5 x 13.5 cm   SOLD

Tenement, Morningside Heights, Manhattan, N.Y., oil on card, 11.5 x 15 cm  unavailable

I remember seeing something on television once about Glasgow, in which the presenter maintained that the layout of New York and its systems of tenements was more reminiscent of Glasgow than any other city, but I cannot, alas, recall what programme it was. But in a sense Glasgow is more interesting, because of its slopes and hills: New York could do with a few hills to set it off.  And I could find no ecclesiastical architecture to match that of "Greek" Thomson.

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Rua Presidente Gama Rosa, Trindade; British trip 2011

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Rua Presidente Gama Rosa, Trindade, oil on card, 12.9 x 10 cm - - available

Another of the paintings of streets in Itacorubi and Trindade.

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I shall be in the UK in July. I will be in Aberdeen, Edinburgh and London. I hope to spend some time in London, probably exploring the suburbs of South London which for me often have a romantic appeal. But that depends on where I might stay.

I also want to go to Glasgow again, because I like the atmosphere there, the wonderful buildings of Alexander "Greek" Thomson , the red sandstone splendour of it all.

I'm pretty happy going where the wind blows me though, because I just like changing places.