Edinburgh Art Fest 2010

I recently saw the Joan Mitchell exhibition at Inverleith House at the Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh and it was magnificent. Mitchell - reminiscent of Patti Smith in style and speech, a former figure skater and a freeekin amazing artist with a hell of a lot of vices. She is relatively unknown but in many circles is considered as 'one of the most singular and important American painters of the post war period' and the only female to hail from the male dominated Abstract Expressionist movement. There is something very moving and raw about her works, they are a 'complex of emotion, memory and sense of place.'

"Untitled," oil on canvas, 1969

I paint from landscapes of the memory I carry with me -

and feelings from the memory of them which naturally become transformed...

I prefer to leave nature to itself. I do not intend to improve it...

I could never mirror it. I love most of all what it leaves inside me.

'Cypress', oil on canvas (1980)

I think Inverleith House is one of the most fantastic venues in Edinburgh to view art, it is light, airy, spacious and you do not have the feeling of some gaunt looking ECA student with an asymmetrical haircut watching your every move and telling you that your are not allowed to eat BonBons in the gallery!

...kinda wish I was though but I just look to clean.

Another fantastic show I saw was by Julie Roberts at Talbot Rice, entitled Child. The works are quite arresting and disturbing, displaying specific scenes of 'children affected by some of the twentieth century's great upheavels'.

Staying together, 2010, oil on linen