Phone box, Lidgett Park Road LS8
There are about 10,500 red telephone boxes like this one left in the UK.
It’s the K6 model – over 60,000 were installed since it’s design in 1935 by Giles Gilbert Scott. The same year my mum was born and Alcoholics Anonymous started.
The red phone box was recently voted the best British design of all time – beating Spitfire, London taxis and the miniskirt. Of course, that’s debatable. This phone box is by St Edmund’s Church in Roundhay, Leeds 8.
Oakwood Parade, Good Friday
Stations of the Cross is an multi-media art exhibition which you can see for the next few weeks at St Edmund’s Church, Lidgett Park Road, Leeds LS8 1JN.
Curated by illustrator and artist Si Smith, fourteen Leeds-based artists were each given one of the 14 Stations of the Cross to interpret. I was commissioned to paint the Ninth Station – Jesus falls a third time.
Opening times, interviews with the artists and more can be found on the St Edmund’s Stations website.
Stations of the Cross, at St Edmund’s Church LS8
Escape to the North Sea! This is the edge of the land at Sandy Beaches Holiday Village, Kilnsea, East Riding of Yorkshire.
Static caravans at Sandy Beaches
Looking south to Spurn Point
The last big storm surge washed away the road and access to the Point is now by foot or truck only.
As I went out one morning… I spied graffiti on graffiti. Someone had written NO on a yellow spot that was spray-painted on a beech tree.
Unless you had an interest in yellow spots, you might not have noticed it.
The yellow spots appeared on about 120 trees a few months ago to mark them for felling.
Gledhow Valley Woods, Leeds 8.
Cars go by.
They cannot see
the yellow spots.
Only the walkers –
the dog walkers,
the lonely walkers,
the walkers in love –
Only the nature lovers,
the poets,
the artists looking for inspiration –
Only the commuters taking short cuts and
the school children
on their way home
can see
the yellow spots.
~
Felling of the beech wood Save Gledhow Valley Woods
FGVW minutes January 2015 (see Selective Tree Felling section)
Animating myself painting – with a 10 year-old dv camcorder and stop motion pro software at Leeds Animation Workshop this weekend.
Rosie’s garden, Bankside Street, Leeds 1991
A hot and sunny day last century, in a friend and neighbour’s garden.
I’m lucky – quite a few people over the years have said to me, “Come and paint in my garden!”. For a long time I lived in places where there were no gardens, only yards – some parts of Leeds 8 are just bricks, cracked concrete and tarmac.
And so it was a kind offer when Rosie said I could paint in her garden and I took it up. She also lent me her car about 500 times before I could afford my own.
This painting is from the summer of 1991 – I remember the oriental poppies that Sumi had planted a few years before, they kept re-seeding themselves. And it looks like broad beans in front of the trellis.
Thanks for the encouragement and all your generosity, Rosie Foster (1953-2015).
View from the helicopter. My friend’s daughter got married in mid-air. She likes adventure… Congratulations, Alice and Shane!
Gledhow Valley Woods, Leeds
Also known as the combat tree. Because camouflage is the art of not being seen, practised by predators, prey, plants… and soldiers.
Saving the Beech Wood
Management proposals – Friends of GV Woods
Gledhow Valley Woods, Leeds
Beech trees in the local woods, marked with yellow dots in a proposed felling plan. I think the spots are giving the trees stronger identities…
Links:
Felling of the Beech Wood – Save Gledhow Valley Woods
Management Plan – Friends of Gledhow Valley Woods
I was commissioned to make a portrait of this former lodge house, built in 1888 by Sir Charles Ryder, one of the original partners of Tetley’s Brewery. I drew the house a few times before I painted it. In the middle of one drawing about 300 or 400 geese flew overhead, very high up. They flew and honked their way west in a giant V-formation that changed shape as they went – but they didn’t make it into the painting.
Thorn Lodge, Roundhay
Gledhow Valley Woods, horse chestnut trees marked for the axe
More trees spray-painted with fluorescent yellow dots in Gledhow Valley Woods. These three horse chestnuts are included in the proposed felling plan.
Links:
Site analysis – Friends of Gledhow Valley Woods
Save Gledhow Valley Woods
Gledhow Valley Woods, beech trees marked for the axe
Recently someone has been out spray-painting in the woods. The graffiti takes the form of yellow dots on about 100 trees. It is possible that these trees will be felled this year in a Leeds city council private finance initiative. Allegedly, the council will not benefit from the sale of the timber. The reasons for the axing seem unclear and there is some strong local debate.
This painting is of three beeches on the slope overlooking the lake.
Links:
Save Gledhow Valley Woods
Friends of Gledhow Valley Woods
Leeds Council reveals plans for 66,000 new homes
Plans for homes in Leeds woodland rejected
Animation for Winter Solstice
It has just gone dark – the longest night
But even in the dark – there is some light!
Happy Solstice to all ye pagans!
Poetry links:
November Night, Adelaide Crapsey
The Day grew small surrounded tight, Emily Dickinson
November, Thomas Hood
November, Ted Hughes
The Roundhay & Oakwood Festival 2014 is on!
Come and see 50 works of art by local artists on display this week at Preston and Stew & Oyster bars in Oakwood, Leeds 8.
No beer purchase necessary, just walk in during opening hours. All are welcome. Feel free to lean over the punters and admire the pictures – they are expecting you.
Official Opening Event – Saturday 1st November 2014, 6-8pm, in the bars. Meet the artists and have a chat. Map and location.
View from Barnhills window
Swallows in Dumfries and Galloway – last seen heading south at the end of September.
Seven Arts, Harrogate Road, Leeds 7
Seven Arts in Leeds is a social enterprise and famous for putting on exclusive and high calibre gigs – jazz, blues, world, comedy, indy and more. Every month there is a new exhibition of artwork in the space. I’m pleased to be showing here again with a special pick of my recent paintings.
My new exhibition at Seven runs from 1st-31st October 2014. The official opening is on Wednesday 15th October, 6-8pm. Everyone is welcome and refreshments will be provided.
See you there if you can make it!
Today is the opening of a new exhibition of my paintings at Bono Art Gallery in Otley. This is my largest show to date – 60 paintings – and I urge everyone who is able to come and see it.
Bono Art Gallery, 7a Courthouse Street, Otley, LS21 3AN
13th-23rd September 2014
Preview Saturday 13th September 2014, 6-9pm
Location and map
Reviews:
Jo Dunn – Biography – by David Veron, 2014
Bono Art Gallery is closing these premises at the end of the month. A new location is hopefully just around the corner. You are invited to come to this last preview – and visit in the next week – to show your support and thanks to Roberto Bono for all the great art that has passed through Otley in the last two years.
The show goes on…
Arthington Viaduct by the River Wharfe, West Yorkshire
The viaduct was engineered by James Bray for the Leeds and Thirsk Railway, c.1850.
The Three Hulats, Harrogate Road, LS7
Being local, I am honoured to have my paintings on show at The Three Hulats for the next two weeks as part of the Chapel Allerton Art Trail 2014, organised by Inkwell and Chapel Allerton Arts Festival. My pictures are in the darts room, so be careful. Lots of local artists are getting exposure during festival week. Download a map here.
The Official Opening of the event happens on Tuesday 26th August, 6-9pm. Follow the art trail along the 18 locations on Harrogate Road from Inkwell to Further North Bar (about half a mile). Everyone is welcome!
There’s an Art Trail Artists’ Talk on Thursday 28th August, 6-8pm at Inkwell. I’ll be taking part, along with fellow artists Nick Claiden, Helen Dryden and Fred Pepper.
The wall is black. And full of colour.
Made of sunlight, tree branches and holes.
More Chinese ink, the first picture is painted on greaseproof paper made in 1988. The last two are on rice paper from this century.
Using a Chinese ink stick, the first painting is done with sable brushes. The second picture is drawn with home-made bamboo pens. The last image is painted with Big Cloud, a Chinese brush.
Indian Ink, Chinese brushes, Czech paper – come together in an English wood.
Yorkshire Dales, coming down from Buttertubs Pass – headed towards the T-junction by Thwaite in Upper Swaledale. Tour de France 2014 Stage 1, Leeds to Harrogate.
Yorkshire Dales between Hawes and Muker – the bicycles will be coming this way soon. Buttertubs is the highest elevation in the Tour de France Stage 1 2014, Leeds to Harrogate.
View from the Chevin IV
View from the Chevin III
I painted the view a few times.
View from the Chevin, eyes shut
View from the Chevin I
Trees and houses face each other. The leaves are out, the trees will win – if left to their own devices.
Another commission – and I was keen to do it. I exhibited here recently in the Roundhay Arts Trail. One of my more formal paintings, not an easy subject and difficult to execute.
I’ve never met a sea snake but the urge to draw this shape makes me think my ancestors did. Either way, it’s about a life-force. The paintings were a commission I’m happy to say, and finished this week.
Buds and shoots and green sun
British Summer Time has begun
I’m losing sleep tonight. The clocks go forward and in the lost hour it feels like time to stop painting the trees and look for a different horizon.
Here’s a drawing with my eyes shut. It still looks like trees:
Saturday late afternoon
Thursday afternoon
late afternoon two days in a row the sun had been shining the woods were cold
Poetry links:
The wistful whispering of winter woods, Jim Cunningham
There’s a certain slant of light, Emily Dickinson
Woods in Winter, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
And you can see some sketches here.
Red Point, Wester Ross
River Wharfe, Otley
New year, new technique. This is oil paint and turpentine, using the turps like water. The result is not the same as a painting in watercolour, but the liquid nature of the medium makes the physical act of painting similar.
A Yorkshire day – view from the Chevin. A new painting commissioned and sold this week by Bono Art Gallery in Otley. On Saturday 5th July 2014 the first stage of Le Tour de France will pass through Otley and the Wharfe valley (scene of this painting) en route from Leeds to Harrogate via the Yorkshire Dales.
This is Bono Art Gallery, a contemporary fine art gallery in Otley and a new venue for my work. I’m happy to say that since the start of this year, Bono is selling my paintings. Other artists’ work you can browse and buy here include David Veron, German Diez, Michael John Griffiths, Moff Skellington, Roberto Bono and Shane Green.
Bono Art Gallery opened in February 2013. It’s a friendly place which has developed into a hub of creative activity on several levels. Artists have set up their easels and paint in the gallery space. Life drawing, art tuition, portraits and commissions are available. Children and adults meet on winter afternoons to play chess. Live art events and talks by international artists also take place – the next one is on Saturday 1st March 2014. I get the feeling Bono’s aim is to bring art to the people – and it’s working… a visit to Bono’s is a life-enhancing experience.
To coincide with the current exhibition of my new paintings at Otley Courthouse, here’s a look at where and how some of it happened.
The exhibition has been extended from 6th – 11th January 2014, open Mon-Sat, 10am-4pm. (N.B. closed for the holidays between 21st Dec and 5th Jan). The preview event is Sunday 8th December, 6-8pm, and everybody is welcome. Click here for more information.
A pigeon flies past and leaves blow off the trees.
This watercolour of houses across the street came about from wanting to paint something that was uninspiring – because painting is painting, whatever the subject – and painting can transform your view of things. It was supposed to be an exercise in letting my hand do the thinking.
But the picture fits within the British landscape tradition – and might even fall into the category of suburban art. These houses were built in 1937. Painting them led me to read Stevie Smith’s poems about the suburbs – and about the place and contribution of the suburbs to twentieth-century British culture. “Round about the streets I slink / Suburbs are not so bad I think…”
Links:
Showing paintings of British suburban houses to Saudis – BBC News Magazine, 2012 “The Suburban Classes” by Stevie Smith
“Suburbs are not so bad I think”: Stevie Smith’s Problem of Place in 1930s and ‘40s London by Kristin Bluemel, 2003
Sunlight through the trees. This is the top end of the road, painted at the end of August. It’s also a homage to John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836–1893) who painted similar scenes of Leeds in the moonlight.
On my local journey home, this is the last street before mine. The Scotland trip has worn off so I’m painting what’s around me here. This picture makes me feel happy – I lived in that house for a short while.
Gledhow Wood Road
Some new paintings, some old themes. I’ve been in the North-West Highlands…
You can see some sketches here.
Spurn Point on the longest day – sunset and moonrise, 180 degrees apart. We went for an evening picnic. These paintings are from the landward-side near the Spurn Bird Observatory. Whenever I go to Spurn I wonder why I stayed away so long and I never want to leave.
Spurn Point sunset, looking towards Hull
Spurn Point with moon, looking south
The back of my house faces the woods – it’s like a green wall in summer. I’ve been separating out the trees to give myself a subject. Somehow doing this also makes me feel less oppressed by the wall – a gathering of 10,000 trees that are twice as old as me and twice as high as my house.
A taste of what’s on show at the exhibition of my paintings at Horticap this month. There’s a rolling program of artists exhibiting at this venue.
I’ve been reviewing my work for the next exhibition. These are the woods in autumn, winter and early spring.
Jo Dunn 