Happy 199th Birthday Franz Liszt

Today is the 199th birthday of the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt. So next year will be the BIG one 200 years!! I'm looking forward to some big celebrations.
Meanwhile:
Celebrate Liszt's birthday with last ever portrait at the Royal Academy Budapest Treasures show | Culture24

Illustration: Mihaly Munkacsy, Franz Liszt, 1886
© Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Art in the Caribbean

Last night we went to the October Gallery in London for the book launch of our friend Anne Walmsley's new book 'Art in the Caribbean'.
It is a beautifully produced book with a 'Gallery' of 40 artists from 1940s to 2000s and an interesting 'Historical Background' from Pre-Columbian 5000BC to Contemporary 2010.
Anne is a writer specialising in Caribbean art and writing. She herself has quite an art collection, some of which I had the pleasure of framing for her.

Art in the Caribbean: an Introduction

The Shame of the billboards of Venice

One of my favourite applications of computer printing is the ability to produce huge prints, as big as buildings, on weatherproof materials. It is quite common to use this process to reproduce the facade of a building on awnings which are then hung on to scaffolding to hide the work being done behind it and to maintain the external appearance of the building.
Unfortunately this technology is being used instead to hang huge advertisements onto buildings, often partially covering the more tasteful reproduction facade.
The photo above shows the church of San Simeon Piccolo in Venice - the first building you see as you come out of the railway station. You can see that they have gone to the trouble of erecting a reproduction of the building to hide the restoration work which would otherwise be quite an eyesore. On top of this they have applied an  advertisement for Calvin Klein jeans!
There are many much much worse examples of this practice.
I was pleased to read in the Observer this week That Sir Norman Foster, the directors of The British Museum, The V& A and New York's Museum of Modern Art are joining a protest against this practice in Venice. Read the interesting article at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/03/venice-violated-billboards-norman-foster

(photo courtesy Michael Tinkler at Flickr)

I'm 'Blogger of the Week' at EBSQ

I'm flattered at being featured as 'Blogger of the Week' on the EBSQ blog. EBSQ is a very active site for self-representing independent artists. I have a portfolio gallery there with a selection of my work. They run monthly competitions, a busy forum and provide useful artist tools. I have been a member of this community for some years and I highly recommend it. (click the logo to see the blog post)

October anniversaries of classical composers

October Great Classical Composer Anniversaries

1/10/1865 Paul Dukas born 3/10/1920 Max Bruch died 3/10/1931 Carl Nielsen died 5/10/1880 Offenbach died 9/10/1813 Verdi born 9/10/1835 Saint-Saëns born 11/10/1896 Bruckner died 12/10/1872 Vaughan Williams born 14/10/1990 Bernstein died 17/10/1849 Chopin died 18/10/1893 Gounod died 20/10/1874 Charles Ives born 22/11/1811 Liszt born 24/10/1725 A Scarlatti died 25/11/1825 J Strauss Jr born 25/11/1838 Bizet born 26/11/1685 D Scarlatti born 27/11/1782 Paganini born