Image by Ro / wererabbit

Nelly Duff Gallery, London.

With Monday afternoon well under-way and my sugar slump gaining momentum, I've caught myself reliving my weekend.

Here are my highlights:

Watching the pUKE’s (a ukulele female-majority punk bank) perform at the Pick Me Up Graphic Arts Festival at Somerset House, London. The band consists of no less than twenty members but were sadly restricted to just a handful for this event. Nonetheless they rocked-out with style. 

There were lots of random and interesting things to look at the Pick Me Up Festival, with Nelly Duff Gallery and Print Club London being particularly memorable.

We ate incredible food in Shoreditch courtesy of Yalla Yalla Beirut Street Food (it was a pop-up eatery…obviously). 

And to top it off I bought a candy striped hair scarf and vintage leather bag at Beyond Retro in Dalston. 

And now I'm nipping off to get a cup of tea.

F is for...

I am now the proud owner of this gorgeous flamingo screenprint by the artist Patrizio Belcampo which was printed through Edinburgh Printmakers. It was purchased today at the London Print Fair, which I visited for work purposes, but somehow came away with a sizeable framed print for myself. But how could I leave without this fancy fella? 

I really love flamingos, and have done since I was little. The description in Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland of Alice and The Queen of Hearts playing a game of croquet with these gangly birds has always stuck with me. In fact, my first overseas adventure at the age of 25 was to the Atacama Desert in Chile to see flamingos graze the high salt lakes. In summary I am a flamingo fan, they’re pink and their knees bend the other way…the other way!

I'm also a great admirer of the pared-down block style Belcampo is using. This style was so effectively exploited in the wood-block illustrations of the British artist William Nicholson (1872-1949) in his publications: An Almanac of Twelve Sports and London Types. It worked in 1890 and it works today.

Plus I'm a sucker for letterpress or anything that looks like letterpress, and have a little collection of items in this ilk. 

Springing into action

Winter feels like it may finally be over. And so my mind turns to spring delights – picnics in the park, leaving home without my heavy coat (and scarf and gloves for that matter), Pimms and lemonade in a sunny beer garden catching up with friends, taking my time to walk home after work and not just rushing from one warm interior to another, actually wanting to eat a salad, oh the list goes on!

Think I might need to dust of my running shoes come to think of it. 

Norman Rockwell

The iconic New York artist Norman Rockwell is best remembered for his detailed paintings that appeared on the covers of The Saturday Evening Post from 1916 – 1963. Let me break that down…that’s 47 years and 321 covers. After this he moved over to Look magazine for a further ten years. He also designed work for numerous advertising campaigns owing much to his broad appeal. Some art critics often used his close relationship with commercial art to dilute his standing as an artist in his own right. 

Rockwell’s knack for capturing small-town American life with humour and reflection, along with his realistic style made him popular in his own time and today. 

You can visit The Norman Rockwell Museum situated in the artist’s old stomping ground of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and in 2011 a major exhibition of his work titled Norman Rockwell’s America was exhibited at London’s Dulwich Picture Gallery.

Dulwich Picture Gallery Norman Rockwell Museum