A very enjoyable wenesday last week spent going to see 'Vivid Field', an exhibition of some of Hughie O'Donoghue's recent and older works at Abbot Hall Gallery in Kendal.  I nearly didn't go - the weather forecast promised the worst day of the week - but I'm glad I didn't wait until thursday or saturday (final day), which were both wetter and drearier by far.

Hughie O'Donoghue has been a favourite artist at least since I went to see a major exhibition of his work in Birmingham, maybe nearly a decade ago.  No, before that, even - the Whitworth was showing his set of carborundum prints, A Line of Retreat.  I was hooked from there on in.  I haven't noticed any of his exhibitions being on within easy reach for quite a while, now, but once I'd spotted this one (and with only a couple of weeks left to run) I was definitely going to make the trip. 

I'm a lazy viewer of art, and I know it.  Due to the bored company I have on occasion taken with me to exhibitions, I really can get through a gallery in an amazingly short period of time.  What that means, of course, is that while I might have glanced at a lot of art, I have missed out on a tremendous amount of depth down the years due to lack of application, and that quite often it's luck whether anything makes a deeper impression on me.  But you just can't approach O'Donoghue like that.  Everything about his work concerns layers and depth and then more layers and further depth.  

O'Donoghue's extensive use of his father's wartime experience and of submerged bodies, his emphasis on myth and memory, is pretty well documented.  Various combinations of these themes form the basis for, I would imagine, most if not all of his work, and this exhibition was no exception.  Cumae and Vesuvius appeared in the most recent works here, but for all the layers of interpretation that can be made, what captures me more immediately is (are?) the colour, light, shadow, the often vast size of canvas, and perhaps more than anything the way the image is frequently half-buried, so that much of the act of viewing is the excavation of what is there.  I just like his work so much.

I liked Kendal too - not enough time to do much more than wander up the street a way, but I'm looking forward to a lazier return visit sometime soon.  I cut across (a beautiful trip, full of Postman Pat hills - no, really! - and stark tree silhouettes against the skyline, and I didn't see another vehicle or person on the B road from one end to the other) from there to Kirkby Lonsdale, which was empty - not how most people see it, by all accounts.  On a grey, lowering day, the town looked built for weather - hunched down and ready to withstand whatever winter might throw at it.  I find it hard to imagine that it looks as good in the summer, but maybe that's just how I feel about summer.

Elizabeth Willow has produced a softly beautiful set of photos of Hot Bed Press - little corners and edges where everyone looks but nobody really sees, and certainly not the way Elizabeth sees.  Thinking that maybe my studio could be made to look similarly attractive with a few artful photos, off I went with my camera.  I make no claims to approach Elizabeth's alchemical abilities, but it did make me see the place in a new light!

Another week of staying near Bath and popping in a handful of times.  It was a good week for in-your-eyes sunshine and sparkle, so I spent a lot of time being delighted and stunned by vivid colour and dramatic tree silhouettes and backlit old man's beard (which festooned just about every hedge) and moody shadows and spiky seedheads and, well, everything really.  Still, I managed not to crash while looking in all directions, which is a definite plus.     

I timed this trip to be able to visit the Society of Wood Engravers' exhibition at the Victoria Art Gallery (I toyed, earlier in the year, with the idea of producing something with the hope of being chosen for this show - they accept other relief print methods too - but decided it was a pricy undertaking with a miniscule chance of success).  I continue to be unsure about wood engraving - as I've mentioned before, I can't decide if it's just too damn fiddly in every possible way.  However, I thoroughly enjoyed the exhibition inspite of not working through that uncertainty.  As ever, the level of tiny tiny skill is incredible and awe-inspiring, and I really liked a lot of the work.  But.

But what, exactly?  In some cases, it's to do with the darkness of so many wood engravings, which makes me feel quite down.  In others, it's actually the amount of detail, so that a work ends up feeling like a showcase for the artist's skillbase without doing anything for, and often actually detracting from, the final image.  A lot of the time it's just that, excellent though a piece might be, it's a bit of a dead end.  Everything was for sale, and at decidedly (ridiculously?) reasonable prices, but although I could imagine hanging quite a number of them on my walls, I could also imagine never actually looking at them again.  They would just be there, beautiful little things given very little attention.  They didn't offer enough.  That sounds mean, but I realise now that it's how I felt.  Of course, it helps that my walls are already quite full, and that a wood engraving - because of all that detail, as much as anything else - needs some space, space I'm not convinced is there to give.

A further little thing.  Not exactly a complaint, and I'm sure it's just me.  The bigger pieces, not surprisingly, were mostly collages of wood engravings.  Now I don't have a problem with that, but I would like to be told up front rather than discovering it for myself by peering closely.  I mean, why not?  I don't think it detracts in any way from the wow factor or the skill being exhibited - in fact it adds some pretty intricate cutting and sticking skills!  But it feels more honest to me to acknowledge that no, this wasn't all done on one massive block, taking most of a lifetime to achieve, but instead imagined and built up from any number of engravings.  Perhaps I'm being curmedgeonly on this one. 

So far I know I've sounded negative, but as I said, I really did enjoy the show and some pieces I would happily have brought home and then pushed other stuff off the walls to make room for them.  A handful of favourites from the show are below, though not alas my absolute favourite, 'Heracleum and Guinea Fowl', a large linocut by Sarah van Niekirk which isn't in the catalogue or on the website.  Shame.