Priceless Paintings from W7

Don’t you love public art?

I’m serious.

There’s an awful lot of awfully expensive and hideous public adornment around. I do, for instance, recall a supersized string of toothpaste, made from concrete, outside the courthouse in my home town, and a poorly manufactured stainless steel monstrosity in the same town.

However, some public art pieces are just brilliant. Most of their brilliance steams from simplicity and accessibility.

Just look at the giant marble in the London Assembly Hall forecourt shown in the little picture here. It’s just a big black ball in the middle of a public space, but it encourages people to interact with the ball, the architecture, and themselves.

Another great example is the Weather Project, a few years ago in Tate Modern, or the binoculars that allowed (through hidden cameras and monitors) looking through from one end on London’s South Bank to some place in New York.

Love it.

Thoughts art, london, London Assembly Hall

Allow me to introduce my little blackbird: Polly.

Nothing much to say about this quickly done simple oil painting, using a pretty good but terribly sticky acrylic medium: Daler-Rowney Alkyd Flow Medium, diluted with 25% of purified linseed oil.

If you are experimenting with oil paint, I surely recommend this medium. Among the acrylic media, this is far superior compared to Liquin or Galkyd.

Polly
Oil on canvas, 10×12”
February 2009

As always, click here, or the thumbnail, for the complete picture. The real thing is on permanent exhibition somewhere in W7.

Painting art, oil painting, paint;