The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition

The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition

I have been making an annual pilgrimage to this exhibition every year for about seven years and I always come away feeling inspired and somehow replete. But this year's show surpassed all the previous one I attended.

 As soon as we walked in, there was something new, fresh and sparkling about the Academy. Have some of the cornices been re-gilded? Is it the gorgeous red they have chosen for the central hall this year? Whatever it is; the effect was stunning and, as we walked through the exhibition room by room , there seemed to a freshness to the way the pictures had been hung which made one of my favourite days out even more delightful!

Albert Irvin - Greet

Albert's paintings are a recent discovery. Normally they are huge canvasses but this one was only 40x40 and yet still had the power and weight of larger ones.

The work, below, by Will Maclean is not actually the one he exhibited but it has the same ingredients. It's a mixture of found objects, paint, cabinetmaking and collage. The piece at the Academy was called 'Boatman' and had me transfixed.

Will Maclean - Northwest passage

Of course, the other thing going on in London is the Summer Olympics which was in evidence everywhere we went. The window displays of shops large and small picked up the theme and there were some pleasant surprises such as free public toilets everywhere and open ticket barriers at Kings Cross Station.  

Well, that dose of inspiration will have to last for a long time because it's unlikely that I will be back next year. I expect I will have lots of other, new things to inspire me.