This article was originally published on Hubpages in March 2020. What's it About? Coal Black Mornings  is an autobiographical account of the childhood, teens and early adulthood of Brett Anderson, who forged a 30+ year career as a singer/songwriter with Suede, and also as a solo artist in the fickle and notoriously competitive music industry. This book focuses on Anderson's life before Suede carried him to fame with hit songs such as  Trash ,  She's in Fashion ,  Animal Nitrate , and  Beautiful Ones.  The narrative closes at the point where the Suede band members sign their first recording contract with Nude Records, and consequently excludes any events which unfolded later, such as the band's commercial successes and failures, inter-personal relationships and inevitable tensions, the band's demise, Anderson's solo career, and then the re-emergence of a more mature Suede. Anderson's father had various jobs over time but was primarily a taxi driver who...

 This article was originally published on Hubpages in May 2021. What's It About? As the introduction to this book clearly states, this is not a 'how-to-paint' manual nor a treatise on art history. If you want those things, the text promptly encourages you to look elsewhere. Instead, in this book Marr asks what attracts a person to a particular painting which not only captures their initial interest, but continues to be inspirational after many decades of viewings. Life, he writes, can be beautiful but mundane, and art can help people to transcend the everyday world of dull routines. Why do we take the time to travel to exhibitions and pay the entry fee in order to look at paintings, when we're all surrounded by so many diverse visual experiences? What makes paintings special? What makes any painter want to paint, to struggle through untold failures in order to create their paintings? How do painters decide how to communicate the idea in their mind to their chosen suppor...

 This article was originally published on Hubpages in October 2019. What's it About? Contained within this book are introductions to 50 artists whose work has been largely overlooked due to gender bias. This book does not attempt to present a complete history of each artist's work. Instead, it provides a clear overview of the creative contributions to the art world by women. It begins with Catharina van Hemessen, who was born in Antwerp in 1528 and who was mentioned as a famous woman painter in a book about the Netherlands published in 1567. It ends with Tacita Dean, who was born in Canterbury, England, in 1965 and who is still creating art in the present day. For each artist, there are brief biographical details and a small portrait image, plus a suggested further reading list. Each artist also has at least one full-page quality reproduction of a typical example of their style of art. About the Authors Art historian Christine Weidemann is the author of  Niki de Saint Phalle ,...

 This article was originally published on Hubpages in August 2019. What's It About? The Story of Painting  aims to present a comprehensive overview of Western art history. This heavy book features 450 fine art paintings, plus over 200 supporting images. The author, Sister Wendy Beckett, begins with Neolithic cave paintings of animals, then moves immediately to the murals of Ancient Egypt. The text moves onto Minoan and Mycenaean art, and then into Ancient Greece. Next comes early Xtian, then Medieval art. Throughout the book, in small side columns, further images or additional information offer greater social context or historical background to the main text. The easy-going narrative winds quickly through the passing centuries until we finish with 20th-century works, such as those by Frank Auerbach and Mark Rothko. Beckett briefly discusses how painting materials and methods have changed through the centuries, and while she is not an artist herself she clearly has a deep love ...

 This article was originally published on Hubpages in July 2019. What's It About? Gallery by title, and gallery by deed. Here we have an image-crammed book dedicated to the popular subject of marine art which presents 136 full-colour pictures of quiet coves, raging storms, elegant regattas and rugged fishing vessels. Some of the chosen paintings are historical in character, depicting paddle steamers and old sailing ships, while others are determinedly contemporary. The media employed ranges from oil paint, watercolours, pastels, acrylics and mixed media. Each reproduced painting is described by media, size, and the support on which it has been painted. Each painting is accompanied by a short description of the work, often with a few words from each contributing artist. About the Author Jerry McClish (1920 - 2008) was the president of the International Society of Marine Painters. He has taught painting workshops in America, Mexico and the Caribbean. He has starred in a video series ...

 This article was originally published on Hubpages in July 2019/ What's it About? The Third Witch  is a lively re-imagining of Shakespeare’s internationally famous play  Macbeth, a s seen through the eyes of a young girl, Gilly, who is an apprentice witch. Gilly has spent the last seven years working as a live-in servant for two elderly women, Nettle and Mad Helga, who live in dire poverty in a ramshackle forest hut. Gilly has braved starvation, freezing winters, and misery in order to fulfill her agreed seven years of servitude so that, on completion of this time, she will be taught the secret skills of traditional witchcraft. But are Nettle and Mad Helga really witches, or are they simply lonely, superstitious old women desperate to keep Gilly nearby so she will look after them in their increasing old age? Gilly is tormented by her memories of a happy childhood cut tragically short when Lord Macbeth killed her parents and their fellow villagers. Gilly escaped, but she h...

 This article was originally published on Hubpages in June 2019. What’s It About? Marina  tells the story of fifteen-year-old Oscar, a lonely boy who lives at a boarding school in Barcelona, Spain, in the late 1970s. Wandering the old and rambling streets, he comes across a mansion surrounded by a tangled garden and is tempted inside. This is how he meets Marina, who lives there with her frail, elderly father and an aloof cat. Marina decides to share a mystery which she has been secretly witnessing. So she takes Oscar to an old graveyard and together they watch as an elegant lady, who is dressed in deep-mourning black, visits a particular grave which is inscribed with a black butterfly. Seized with curiosity, the two teenagers plan to discover who this lady is and why she enacts this ritualistic visitation at the same time each month. Marina  leads its readers through an engagingly complex plot which features a derelict theatre, automatons which seem to come alive, severa...

 This article was originally published on Hubpages in June 2019. What's It About? Laura leaves behind the city she's always known and follows her husband Henry to a remote cotton farm in the Mississippi Delta. While Henry's living out his dream, Laura has to struggle to raise two children, run the house and help out as best she can under the critical eye of her bone-idle, racist father-in-law. When the weather turns to rain, the one bridge to escape by becomes swallowed under a rising tide of glutinous mud. As WWII ends, two soldiers return from the Front. One is Henry's dashing brother, Jamie. The other is the eldest son of the black sharecroppers who work on Henry's land. They have survived the war, but will they survive its brutal memories? And will they survive the harsh grind of endless work and severe poverty which await them now they are home? About the Author Mudbound  was Hillary Jordan's debut novel. She has a BA in English and Political Science from W...

 This article was originally published on Hubpages in June 2019. What's It About? This heavily illustrated book tracks the rise of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood from its inception and early struggles for recognition and respect to the heady years, which saw the blossoming careers of some of the Western world's best-loved 19th-century artists. In the autumn of 1848, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his brother William Michael Rossetti, along with William Holman Hunt, Thomas Woolner, Frederick George Stephens and James Collinson, met at the home of John Everett Millais on Gower Street, London. Inspired by etchings of antique Italian works, they created a new artistic aesthetic inspired by paintings created prior to the Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino era (1483 to 1520). Thus, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB) was born. These young art students were roundly ridiculed for their pretension. Stoically, they forged ahead and organised independent exhibitions of their work. At firs...

 This article was originally published on Hubpages in March 2019. What's It About? Born in 1784, Minguillo Fasan is a vile child. Everyone dislikes him, even his own parents. By the age of twelve he has developed a cruel, sadistic temperament which defies any attempt to curb it. Then a sister is born. Beautiful, kind and gentle, Marcella is everything which Minguillo is not. She is loved by all, including the household servants who become deeply loyal to her cause, especially after her brother deliberately cripples her leg. Minguillo finds his father's legal Will, and he learns the family's luxurious Venetian villa is to be inherited by Marcella instead of himself. Furious, he schemes to have her removed from obstructing his ambitions. Meanwhile, their father spends most of his time on the other side of the world, in Arequipa, Peru. He is there to oversee the family's silver mines, which are the source of their wealth. But he also has another life there which his Veneti...