where art collides

.

More art of a culinary nature. It has since been destroyed. Artistic vandalism with its own artistic merit.

It is winter. The chicken is in the oven, stuffed with breadcrumbs, herbs, bacon and dried apricot. The potatoes are par boiling before accompanying the fowl and the parsnips, French beans, carrots and sprouts are all prepared and ready for cooking.

The piece de la resistance is the apple and blackberry pie. The fruits of our autumnal efforts now coming out of deep storage to round off the Sunday lunch.

Randomly deposited pair of shoes. I used the word deposited in preference to discarded because their owner intends to return and wear them again. That isn’t to say they will be where he left them as his mother will have tidied them up.

There are aspects of this photograph that may be considered worthy of analysis. The bottom right of the photo has a lighter patch of flooring suggesting that the shoes are in a hallway in front of a glazed door.

The shoes also point in different directions inconsistent with the positioning of a normal person’s feet. Because of this one might consider that the shoes belong to a ballet dancer. This would be incorrect. The orientation of the shoes is entirely random and a result of the kicking of feet as they came in the front door.

The bit about the glazed front door is correct.

Taken on a dull Sunday afternoon in February. The room had a north facing bay window  that let in the right amount of diffused light for the effective presentation of this composition.

The artist, Trefor Davies, makes good use of every day objects in his work. Here we have three very different textures. The splash of colour sandwiched in the middle of what some might argue are two bland exteriors surprisingly pushes the eye towards the fluffy shagpile that dominates the whole picture to the right and centre of the frame.

As a Crown Representative for technology, working out of the Cabinet Office, I get to attend meetings in some interesting and unique places around Whitehall. As a painter myself, I’m often impressed by – and sometime in awe of – the artworks that hang on the walls and stand in the halls of Government buildings.  It’s also interesting to see that few people stop to look and consider the art around them – probably because they’re used to it being part of their day-to-day lives.

An example of this struck me when I was checking in with the security office for a meeting at Admiralty House.  Directly above the security officer’s head was one of the finest portraits of Samuel Pepys that I have ever come across. In fact, I’d seen it in an art book as a child, but to see it ‘in the flesh’ as it were, was quite a thing for me. The security chap was more than slightly bemused by my gawping at the picture above his head; a picture he must have seen everyday and therefore took no real notice of.

This got me thinking about who actually ‘owns’ these pictures and who is responsible for managing such ‘assets’. One quick search on Google gave me the answer. The works belong to the nation and are managed by the Government Art Collection; which comes under the umbrella of The Department of Culture, Media and Sport. I was delighted to see that they provide a website which is centered on a pretty well designed searchable database. It’s not clear how comprehensive this database is (for example I couldn’t find the Pepys portrait in there), but it kept me engaged for a good hour or so, and there’s a wonderful diversity of classic and contemporary work listed.

I’m going to be tweeting pictures (where I have permission) as I come across any I like. You can join me on this journey of discovery by following me on Twitter @robwilmot