Thursday 16 June 2011

Thursday Painting


After all that cerebral activity, I thought I'd just put up a painting today - I love a lot of Stanley Spencer's work, including this: Swan Upping at Cookham (1915-9) which is in the Tate (more info here).

Hope you're having a good week! I'm finding reading a bit slow, but today read (as well as some interesting books about childlessness from the 1920s - did you know that a lack of commonsense could be to blame?[!]) two-thirds of a bizarre, funny, grotesque American novel published in 1980, but written in the 1960s by an author who killed himself in 1969. Any guesses?

11 comments:

  1. love his work ,always a quirky comic feel to them ,all the best stu

    ReplyDelete
  2. Christopher Bowden16 June 2011 at 00:38

    John Kennedy Toole: A Confederacy of Dunces?

    ReplyDelete
  3. I second A Confederacy of Dunces.

    ReplyDelete
  4. That's a wonderful book. I hope you're enjoying it!

    ReplyDelete
  5. It has to be A Confederacy of Dunces. I read it for the first time a few years ago (and I BOUGHT the book too) and thought it was absolutely wonderful from start to finish.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Grotesque is the word for those characters. While I didn't love this book, it was good to read, and one of those modern classics that is really worth reading for the influences it has since had.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Gotta be A Confederacy of Dunces.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Glad you like Spencer, Simon! So do I. Twenty years ago, I devised a one man show, 'A Present from Cookham', based on his life for an actor friend.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Hello Simon - I love Stanley Spencer too. I used to live near Cookham where there is a nice little village-hall-type place with his paintings in. Well, that's what it was like when I was there - with his painting gear too, as he used to pull a cart I think around with it all in, and an umbrella. He used to paint the inhabitants of Cookham rising from the dead - amazing!

    ReplyDelete
  10. The nice little village-hall gallery in Cookham is still recognisable but is now a proper art gallery. No doubt much better for the paintings but not quite as charming as it used to be.

    ReplyDelete
  11. The nice little village-hall gallery in Cookham is still recognisable but is now a proper art gallery. No doubt much better for the paintings but not quite as charming as it used to be.

    ReplyDelete

I've now moved to www.stuckinabook.com, and all my old posts are over there too - do come and say hello :)

I probably won't see your comment here, I'm afraid, but all my archive posts can also be found at www.stuckinabook.com.