More found objects

A book that I thought was unused turned out to have been thoroughly used - "Edinburgh in February" has a quick drawing, or sparse writing, on every page. It documents a week of walks into town along the Water of Leith, pauses in coffee shops, the searches for lunches, and of course the museums and art galleries visited.

 It starts with things seen on the train journey -

Leylandii hedge cut back on one side

abstraction

 and brought back many memories of things seen - eg this "object poem" -

 One of the exhibitions was on Robert McBryde and Robert Colquhoun (artists new to me); it included a Monitor film made in September 1959 of them painting in adjoining empty rooms in a rural cottage, and then rumbling off in a cart to find another, "taking with them the essentials of their own world" - canvases, presumably paints and brushes, and not much else that you could see.

At least that's how I remember it, but watching it again (here) I'm more taken with "perhaps I paint canteloupes and lemons because I like yellow, not any yellow but the yellow of citric fruit" - oh my, to be an artist in those heady days!

In the notebook are many other new-to-me names, and objects - Paolozzi's "Thorns"; Ponte City; Belgian painter Raoul de Keyser; Pat Douthwaite; Marion Smith (Daylight Diary); Frances Walker; Lorna MacIntosh; James Castle; many more, to be investigated some other time.

Also from the back of the shelf, this embroidery in progress -

Screen printed at Camberwell (2011) onto an aged damask tablecloth. I had the urge to fill the spaces between the lines with stitches, to hide some of that runny inkiness.

The back shows a parsimonious use of thread -