I love this quote because it is patently untrue. Was it tongue in cheek I wonder? I had the volumes of 'Modern Painter' but they were lengthy with words and rather dull. Poor Ruskin is forever scarred in the public eye with his inability to sleep with his wife. See I have also done it! He was an art critic first and foremost, living a comfortable life on the earnings of his father's business. No need for work but a lifetime of writing on art. Bless his soul, but a lot of it was dull.
I am thumbing through an old blog of mine, 'Poems, Paintings and Photos'. It is the year 2008, I have gone through a divorce and living with my beloved Paul. I am learning about the joys of the Essex countryside. It is tranquil and flat, we wander by the river and end up at the Cat's pub, deep in the country side only open a couple of days a week. Cat paintings adorn the walls, no dogs allowed, there is a resident cat. A large barn at the side of the pub holds two great steam engines. This is retiree land, you draw up the portcullis and live in comfortable style in a small village of expensive houses, away from the troubles of the world.
I find an article by Paul Devereux on art he is more interested in the way art has developed, sometimes land based, as humans slowly evolve and those first cave paintings and rock markings start to talk the language. Firstly it is about hunting and the animals that exist around them, but suddenly hand prints appear, an acknowledgement of their human presence.
In the year of 2008 I chatted to myself, on my voyage of discovery. Did I find any thing, the answer is probably not, but I walked the Avebury landscape, following in the footsteps of the old ones. Watched the neopagans come and worship at the Swallowhead Springs. I cannot take on any religion for the fact of the matter is all of them are belief systems concocted by humans. Mostly to control.
Then because I am idly passing through, the Ruralists appear with their paintings. Which I had seen at the Victoria Gallery in Bath. A group of painters drawn together in 1976, similar to the Pre-Raphaelites, but their artwork doesn't please as much. But they had captured Avebury in some of their paintings and Silbury Hill with owls swooping past.
Of course there came another scandal with Graham Ovendon, one of the group, when he served a jail sentence for abusing a child/children. He painted quite a few children, the judge said at his time of sentencing that Ovendon's work should be destroyed and the Tate immediately took down his paintings but reinstated four abstract paintings in 2015. Like Ruskin and Lewis Carroll his interest in young nubile female children can be seen in many of his paintings.
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