Tate Britain

I am stunned by how much inspiration i get from my trips to art galleries. I never expected this. I don't like art. I don't know why i know this but i do. So how come, i do like the art and i do get so many ideas when i in and look round galleries.
Yesterday started well. I am planning a couple of architectural quilts and there is nowhere better than London for finding architectural details. We barely cleared the tube station before i started finding buildings with the right details for one of the quilts and a sign to a museum with the design elements of the other one. I guess i will be going back with a camera in the very near future.

As usual the first stop was the national gallery. I was surprised how many pictures had moved. Even in their temporary exhibition some of the paintings are on longer on display. I guess i was lucky to see them in the first place. I am quite pleased that i remembered them well enough to know what was missing from where. I hope that means i am learning. I was very disappointed to find one of the pair of pictures of venice has gone. Still it is in my head and as i know it exists i can always look it up. These two pictures have convinced me that i want to visit Venice. I wonder if they have quilt shops there and he so would they like to hire an English quilt teacher.

From what i saw the Tate Britain is much more my line of gallery than the Tate Modern. I suppose that translates to they have art i get :) we managed to catch the Turner Prize show. They had work from the four finalists. For a change i thought two of them made realy interesting work. Mark was talking a lot about trying to get people to interact with art in his video interview. I understand what he means and i quite like the style of his work. He is also interested in the effect and power of words and uses them in all of his work. I have been trying to avoid that, but i think i will lighten up on it. If i think a piece offer text it will get it. One of his works has given me an idea for a dynamic quilt that changes design as you look at it. I have been thinking about quilts with changeable designs for a while but hadn't come up with anything that would be good for a show environment but now i think i have cracked it.

Even more strange than there being a Turner Prize finalist i liked, i like the winner. She paints great quilt designs. More interestingly i felt like she was challenging me. I can do this in paint, could you do it in cloth? Some even had the impression of depth which seems like is should be easy to replicate, except it was so sharp with hard angles. Getting fabric to do that will be a challenge. A challenge i intend to meet.

We didn't manage to see much of the rest of the gallery this time but i did see enough to get a better idea of what i don't like about newer art. Well specifically recent paintings. I find them too naive and simple. Is there a reason for so many people to work in this way? There are still some very painterly painters but either there aren't many or they aren't successful at the moment and i would love to know why. I found it very interesting that some of the same artists doing there very simple painting were askn producing amazingly detailed works in other media. So it isn't that they couldn't be more painterly them dont want too. Or the galleries don't want to show it. Any ideas why and what this is all about. I would love to plug a new to me artist but there seems to be very little about him. His name is Robin Ironside. I think he is worth having a look for have a look and let me know what you think.