N.B., Click on image to zoom.
'Screen shot from Songs from Wales'
This is a screen shot from one of my YouTube videos featuring music and images.
I started doing these around a year ago after seeing a YouTube vid which featured some celtic music and, as visuals, some of my paintings. They were produced by a chap from Sweden (or one of the other Baltic area countries), and he got my paintings from the web as screen shots. Seeing his vid made me think 'hello, I can do that', so I had the simple idea of performing one of my recorded songs against a background of some of my paintings or drawings. As a kind of permanent virtual exhibition.
I taught myself how to make the video (with simple transitions and so on) at the same time as I made the first one. So technically, as you can imagine, they are terribly basic.
Possibly at some time in the future I may try to learn somewhat more subtle techniques but for now simply putting them online seems ok.
Click here to see the video itself or just type 'Songs From Wales, Harry Robertson' to visit all of them.
'Screen shot from 'Get High'
Click here to see the 'Get High' video
My Studio is up in my loft and is fairly small. It sits next to Mari's which is identical in size.
I divide mine into two halves. At one end I do my paintings, drawings, and all other visual work, and at the other end I do my audio recordings, song writing, etc.
I make the videos in the most basic way possible, using the camera on my computer to record a performance of each song.
So this procedure has the benefit (or the drawback) of displaying my studio in each video. In the above image can be seen a life drawing and an outside acrylic painting on the easel.
And on the right, can be seen one of my colour charts, in this case, one exploring some of the many variations of green which I can achieve using my standard colour palette.
By the way, in the last few days Mari and I have been in London staying with friends. One of the very interesting things that we did was visit an exhibition of paintings by an old friend which I will go into in some detail in my next post.
N.B., Click on image to zoom.
'Screen shot from Songs from Wales'
This is a screen shot from one of my YouTube videos featuring music and images.
I started doing these around a year ago after seeing a YouTube vid which featured some celtic music and, as visuals, some of my paintings. They were produced by a chap from Sweden (or one of the other Baltic area countries), and he got my paintings from the web as screen shots. Seeing his vid made me think 'hello, I can do that', so I had the simple idea of performing one of my recorded songs against a background of some of my paintings or drawings. As a kind of permanent virtual exhibition.
I taught myself how to make the video (with simple transitions and so on) at the same time as I made the first one. So technically, as you can imagine, they are terribly basic. Possibly at some time in the future I may try to learn somewhat more subtle techniques but for now simply putting them online seems ok.
Click here to see the video itself or just type 'Songs From Wales, Harry Robertson' to visit all of them.
'Screen shot from 'Get High'
Click here to see the 'Get High' videoMy Studio is up in my loft and is fairly small. It sits next to Mari's which is identical in size.
I divide mine into two halves. At one end I do my paintings, drawings, and all other visual work, and at the other end I do my audio recordings, song writing, etc.
I make the videos in the most basic way possible, using the camera on my computer to record a performance of each song.
So this procedure has the benefit (or the drawback) of displaying my studio in each video. In the above image can be seen a life drawing and an outside acrylic painting on the easel.
And on the right, can be seen one of my colour charts, in this case, one exploring some of the many variations of green which I can achieve using my standard colour palette.
By the way, in the last few days Mari and I have been in London staying with friends. One of the very interesting things that we did was visit an exhibition of paintings by an old friend which I will go into in some detail in my next post.
quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz “details, details........,” quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz
Any idea what's happening here, and who painted it?
(The answer will be in the next posting.)
And here's the answer from the last posting -
'Hell'
(the right panel from the triptych 'The Garden of Earthly Delights').
(the right panel from the triptych 'The Garden of Earthly Delights').
by Hieronymus Bosch, Prado, Madrid.
quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz “details, details........,” quiz quiz quiz quiz quiz
Le Corbusier
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Music
I've recently started, just for fun, linking the two preoccupations together, by featuring a few paintings along with one of my recorded songs. If you have a spare minute, you're welcome to take a look. . .
These songs can also be found on (and downloaded from) iTunes, Spotify, CDBaby, and many other platforms, - (my intention is to upload a different song each month)
Also in the last period I've been recording some songs with some friends -
please have a listen here if you have the time.
please have a listen here if you have the time.
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. . and now, a Recommended Read . .
'The Gulag Archipelago'
By Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Published by Vintage Classics
I'm re-reading this book in a truncated edition. Originally it was in three parts but it has been made shorter and more reader friendly. It is difficult to believe the violence that was done to the Russian people in the communist period, but this vastly respected book sets the record straight.
It also benefits from a wise foreward by Jordon Peterson.
Several years ago, Mari and I met a Russian ex-history teacher who had moved to Vilnius to get away from Russia. She told us that she felt continuously ashamed about all the mis-readings of history that she had un-knowingly taught during those years in Russia, because she now knows the truth.
I remember her saying "Hitler killed millions, but he killed people from other nations, Stalin killed more, and they were his own people!"
A rather fine line to draw. But I get her point.
Reviews
"To live now and not to know this work is to be a kind of historical fool missing a crucial part of the consciousness of the age" (W.L. Webb Guardian)
"The ferocious testimony of a man of genius" (Stephen Spender London Magazine)
"What gives the book its value is the sound it gives out; the harsh roar give out by a wise and experienced animal as a warning that the herd is in danger" (Rebecca West Sunday Telegraph)
"He is one of the towering figures of the age as a writer, as moralist, as hero... in The Gulag Archipelago he has acheived the impossible" (Edward Crankshaw Observer)
"It is impossible to name a book that had a greater effect on the political and moral consciousness of the late twentieth century" (David Remnick New Yorker)
About the Author
Aleksander Solzhenitsyn was born in Kislovodsk, Russia, in 1918.
He was brought up in Rostov, where he graduated in mathematics and physics in 1941. After distinguished service with the Red Army in the Second World War, he was imprisoned from 1945 to 1953 for making unfavourable remarks about Joseph Stalin.
He was rehabilitated in 1956, but in 1969 he was expelled from the Soviet Writers' Union for denouncing official censorship of his work. He was forcibly exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974 and deported to West Germany.
Later he settled in America, but after Soviet officials finally dropped charges against him in 1991, he returned to his homeland in 1994 and died in August 2008, aged eighty-nine. Solzhenitsyn wrote many books, of which One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Cancer Ward and The Gulag Archipelago are his best known.
He was brought up in Rostov, where he graduated in mathematics and physics in 1941. After distinguished service with the Red Army in the Second World War, he was imprisoned from 1945 to 1953 for making unfavourable remarks about Joseph Stalin.
He was rehabilitated in 1956, but in 1969 he was expelled from the Soviet Writers' Union for denouncing official censorship of his work. He was forcibly exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974 and deported to West Germany.
Later he settled in America, but after Soviet officials finally dropped charges against him in 1991, he returned to his homeland in 1994 and died in August 2008, aged eighty-nine. Solzhenitsyn wrote many books, of which One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Cancer Ward and The Gulag Archipelago are his best known.
Review from Amazon.
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