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Paintings and Plants

Bird bath with Crocosmia Lucifer, July 2023

Yesterday I visited the Wirral Society of Arts' members exhibition at the Williamson Art Gallery in Oxton. Entry is free, while the optional printed brochure costs just £2. The brochure gives each artist's name plus the title of their painting(s), and lists their fee. Most work here is for sale, and prices vary from a modest £65 up to £2,300.

When I visit an exhibition, I like to do a quick walk-round to assuage my curiosity as to what's there. Then I'll do a much slower circuit, and take a longer, deeper look at the display. Quite often, with a local exhibition, I'll visit more than once.

Looking at the work, I was sometimes able to identify which artist had created it without needed to check the brochure. So I was immediately able to recognise Alla Barkova's detailed tree drawings, Emma Dromgoole's joyously colourful nudes, and Janine Pinion's melodramatic, misty landscapes. But there are 85 artists taking part in this event, and most have contributed several pieces, giving the visitor plenty to feast their eyes on.

Works which caught my attention in particular included Julia Duerden's beautifully observed ink and watercolour painting, Harbourside, Whitby; Mike Fenner's imaginative tarot-based mixed media piece, The Hierophant;  the expressive brush strokes in Stephen Keenan's acrylic painting, Cable Bay, Anglesey; Jonathan Kennedy's A2-sized flower drawing, Memento Mori; a pencil drawing of trees, with a ghostly figure hugging one trunk, called Mid-Winter Echoes by Vidah Roberts; Harry Robertson's oil paintings water, Waterfall near Talybont on Usk and Rocks at Betws-y-Coed; the gorgeous Young Cheetah by Robert D. Symington; and David Tunstall's small but lovely Coast Walk.

Of course, these are just my own subjective favourites. This list doesn't imply that anyone's work is "better" than anyone else's.

Also currently on exhibition at the Williamson are huge watercolours by Rob Davies, whose residency at Edge Hill Station resulted in train tracks being one feature of his semi-abstract landscape paintings. And there are several gallery rooms dedicated to the Apollo moon landings, with photos and film footage, which is not of any interest to me personally, but each to our own.

Over recent weeks, I've spent a fair bit of time tweaking my garden, adding some new plants and pruning back some which needed a haircut, such as our forsythia which was towering over the fence and flapping against the kitchen window. The pink scabious is looking lovely, and the length of time the alstroemeria has been in flower is impressive. Previously I've only had this as a cut flower, when they only lasted two or three days before wilting. When growing in soil, they last for week after week after week.

The big disappointment was the masterwort, or astrantia major. I bought two varieties online and the courier messed up the delivery, which meant that the poor plants were in the dark, in their packaging, for eight days. When I finally received them, they were in a pretty miserable condition. I replanted them and hoped for the best, but the damage was done, and while they struggled on they've slowly yellowed and died. It's put me off buying plants online, to be honest.

The big happy surprise is that a clematis which I thought had died is now doing great, having grown up from the roots. The clematis met a sticky near-death thanks to our dogs hurtling over it and snapping it off at the base. When I spotted a green shoot tentatively poking up, I put a metal climbing trellis over it to protect it, and now the clematis is covered in dark purple flowers. Also, a couple of fuchsias which had seemingly died over winter revived, sending up new growth from the roots, and are now covered in buds.

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