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Penwith Psychoanalysis West Cornwall (and local history)

Battered Britain- confused Cornwall

Very likely it is the mood I find myself in at the moment. Arriving in town just a few minutes earlier than expected. The bus driver must be keen or perhaps a manic denial of boredom. Then the bus is blue -quite unusual and reminiscent of a bus service locally that years ago was renowned for unreliable and battered buses. The service now appears to have hired a range of peculiar vehicles – this one has shiny black leather seats somehow suggestive of the aspirations of another era.

Need to top up with a little cash but a scrawled notice- and I mean a scrawled notice says “Out of order” and you almost expect it to add….” this is Penzance boy….carry on waiting for Godot”. Thank goodness for the Co-op.

As I stroll on I think of the latest large Tory leaflet that has been pushed through the door. Green naturally. Telling me “together we are successful” or words to that effect. What at precisely? Schools where there are very few fully qualified teachers and pupils marched before the moronic inducing banks of second rate computers or various mad pods and pads. Successful with 12 hour waiting times in A and E. Bleak visions of rooms that would be like Scutari drawn by Daumier. No Florence- instead the only visible care comes from the worried looking young Security Staff in front of lengthening lines of ambulances. Successful for the Mme Defay who made a fortune out of her Government Grant for pathetic PPE.

Everywhere recently my eye has been captured by curious clumps of electrical apparatus. These somehow have a certain lyrical attraction even or especially when accompanied by patches of viridian lichen or intriguing pipework, transformers and untidy wiring. In other countries with technological competence they might be safely enclosed.

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Cedric Morris: May Flowering Irises No. 2 (1935)

Cedric Morris hugely influential …including I believe the great Maggie Hambling.

At Sunnyside - Where Truth and Beauty Meet's avatarAt Sunnyside - Where Truth and Beauty Meet

Cedric Morris,(1889-1982), May Flowering Irises No. 2, 1935, Oil on canvas, 25 3/4 x 21 1/4 in. (65 x 54 cm), Image Source: Philip Mould and Co

“By 1935, when this work was painted, Morris’s fascination with irises had firmly taken hold. He established a studio in the garden where he would sit and paint his flower subjects for days on end, and one ex-student, Joan Warburton, poignantly reminisced how ‘to go in there quietly when Cedric was painting the favourite of all his flowers, Irises, was a revelation.’[2] Morris’s thorough understanding of the iris is evident in the present work which explores each flower individually, using colour and texture to give them mood and personality.”

Philip Mould and Co

Thanks for Visiting 🙂

~Sunnyside

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Artist Paula Rego (Portugal)

Watched an interesting documentary on the BBC about Rego- she sounded a very brave woman.

imogen's avatarImogen is Reading and Watching the World: On Books, Film, Art & More

Just after the UK’s last COVID lockdown, and longing to visit galleries again, my mum and I did an online City Lit course on major artists whose work was to be exhibited in London over the summer of 2021.

One of those discussed was renowned Portuguese artist Paula Rego (1935-2022), an artist known for her feminist and political stance, along with skewed references to fairy tales, nursery rhymes and Portuguese fables, reminiscent of a painterly Angela Carter. Other interests and influences include traditionally female crafts such as embroidery and dollmaking (subtly subverted), Jungian psychology and surrealism.

I wasn’t particularly taken with Rego’s work when it was presented to me on screen, but when I went to see the large-scale retrospective of her work at Tate Britain that autumn I was converted. Mum and I saw more of her work on display at the Venice Biennale this year, when we escaped…

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St Martin-in-the-Fields, WC2

Amazing- and such a very busy place to sketch with an Art shop nearby for supplies!!

Jane's avatarJane Sketching

On the way back from a visit to the West End, I passed St-Martin-in-the-Fields, standing out against the cold sky.

St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square. Sketched 2nd Dec 2022, in sketchbook 12

The statue in the foreground, left, is the Edith Cavell Memorial, seen from the back. Edith Cavell (1865-1915) was a British nurse. In German-occupied Belgium, guided by her principles of humanity and her Christian faith, she provided medical care to soldiers irrespective of which side they were on. She was executed by a German firing squad 1915, because she had helped Belgian, British and French soldiers to escape the German occupation and reach Britain. Her grave is in Norwich Cathedral.

I sketched standing on a corner of the Charing Cross road, see map above. This turned out to be a very noisy location. The National Portrait Gallery is being refurbished and there was continuous drilling and banging. Buses and…

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Autoportrait Day 292~ Jiab Prachakul

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Fridericus – 1937

paulskin's avatarPreußische Kuriositäten

A very enjoyable film, and no obvious dodgy propaganda, given the time it was made…

I particularly enjoyed the little cameo obviously intended to portray Johann Friedrich Adolf von der Marwitz (Friedrich August Ludwig’s uncle) at Hubertusburg.
Wählte Ungnade, wo Gehorsam nicht Ehre brachte”. Indeed.

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Dame Laura Knight: ‘I Paint Today’

Wonderful painter!

At Sunnyside - Where Truth and Beauty Meet's avatarAt Sunnyside - Where Truth and Beauty Meet

DAME LAURA KNIGHT, R.A., R.W.S. (BRITISH, 1877-1970), At the Edge of the Cliff, signed ‘Laura Knight’ (lower left), oil on canvas, 23 x 28 in. (58.4 x 71.1 cm.), Painted circa 1917, Image Source: Christie’s

At the Edge of the Cliffis one of the strongest works in this clifftop series. The young woman in her striking striped blue and white skirt and white jumper has a timeless quality to her, her outfit feeling as modern to a contemporary audience as it did over 100 years ago. She stands on the cliffs at the top of Lamorna Cove, gazing out at the turquoise and deep blue sea, lost in thought.”

READ FULL ESSAY: Christie’s

What is demonstrably clear is that Knight was, as her biographer Alice Strickland recently said, ‘a woman of firsts’. She was the first female artist to be made a Dame of the British Empire, in…

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Franz Marc: Blue Horse I (1911)

Splendid- love Marc and Macke!!

At Sunnyside - Where Truth and Beauty Meet's avatarAt Sunnyside - Where Truth and Beauty Meet

Franz Marc, Blue Horse I, 1911, oil on canvas, Lenbachhaus in Munich, Image Source: wikimedia

Read More

Franz Marc at wikiwand

Franz Marc at Art Story

Franz Marc: The Painter Who Loved Horses

Franz Marc’s artist page at Guggenheim

Franz Marc Museum website

See More

Tag: Franz Marc At Sunnyside

Thanks for Visiting 🙂

~Sunnyside

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Hotel Splendide by Ludwig Bemelmans  

Compare and contrast with Joseph Roth’s “Hotel Savoy”. Sounds a great read this!

JacquiWine's avatarJacquiWine's Journal

The Austrian-born writer and illustrator Ludwig Bemelmans is perhaps best known for the Madeline series, a much-loved collection of children’s picture books, mostly from the 1950s. But before he made his name as an artist and writer, Bemelmans spent several years in the New York hotel industry, working his way through the ranks from lowly bus boy to assistant manager of the private banqueting suite at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.

Hotel Splendide is an affectionate series of vignettes recounting Bemelmans time at the Ritz-Carlton during the decadent 1920s – an utterly charming book that reflects the author’s eye for an amusing anecdote or observation while still maintaining a genuine sense of humanity. It’s a delightful collection of sketches, perfectly capturing the rituals and idiosyncrasies of a bygone age, perfect for dipping into during the dark days of winter.

Hotels frequently have a culture all of their own, and Bemelmans captures the

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New Literary History of Australia (1988), edited by Laurie Hergenan (Decolonising a Blog… a work in progress #4)

Sounds intriguing and significant.

Lisa Hill's avatarANZ LitLovers LitBlog

Cultural warning: this post contains the names of First Nations authors who have died.


Laurie Hergenan PhD AO FAHA(1931 – 2019) was an Australian literary scholar. Educated at the University of Sydney and Birkbeck College in London, he held academic positions in Tasmania and Queensland.  He was the founder and former editor of Australian Literary Studies (1963) and he published on Xavier Herbert.

And he was also the editor of the 1988 Penguin New Literary History of Australia. 

This literary history, published in Australia’s bicentennial year, has been sitting on the shelf for a while.  I picked it up to see what it had to say about Frank Moorhouse (and The Electrical Experience in particular) and ended up reading it, chapter by chapter, at bedtime.  (Yes, a tad nerdy, I know.)

Even at university, I was not a scholarly reader.  I’ve always been much more interested in the book than…

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