Welcome to my website - I hope you enjoy your visit.

The Rory McEwen exhibition is now on at Kew in London until 22nd September. 

If you do have the chance to go and see it, then I think this promises to be one of those astonishing and revelatory exhibitions that lives with you all your life. If you are too far away then do buy the book (hardback, paperback), it will be worth every penny.

The official Kew webpage is 'Rory McEwen, The Colours of Reality'.  If you've watched the small video about the exhibition, it's probably sensible for me to point out that I do have a comb and I do actually know how to use it ...it's just that my mind was obviously on other things that day and I forgot. Ooops.

There is a longer version of the video which includes Rory's music and other art skills here; both films were cleverly made by Northern Town.

Also at the exhibition there is also a small but absolutely dazzling selection of paintings from the Shirley Sherwood Collection of contemporary artists, many on vellum, including a small plum by Jenny Brasier that I remember coveting when I first saw it for sale in the mid-90's at an SBA exhibition. 

I thought it would be fun to look for all things Rory McEwen on the web that I can find. Here they are...

Katherine Tyrrell, who writes the blog 'Making a Mark', has been to see the exhibition: Here she comments on a day in the life of Rory McEwen. Looking forward to her review of the exhibition.

article in the Scotsman about the Kew exhibition and interview with Christabel McEwen (Rory's daughter).

exhibition (you need to scroll down when you get to the page) at Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh of The Tweed Road by Rory including five of his rarely seen Polarised Perspex sculptures until June 23rd.

article in the Telegraph about the exhibition with picture gallery.

Susan Frei Nathan blogged this.

The Duchess of Cornwall has been to visit.

Jessica, who works at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery (do say hello to the team if you visit ...they are lovely and do a great job), mentions this which is very interesting and this on her blog Inky Leaves. She has put an image of one of Rory's rose paintings here; if you click on the image you get a larger version which, if you left-click your mouse on, you can enlarge further to see the detail. It is absolutely glorious, thank you Jessica.

His niece, Christian McEwen, has made her lovely memoir about him (see here) into a small book entitled 'Music hiding in the air' with some reproductions of his work and family photos. It will be available from the Kew bookshop in May to coincide with the exhibition; I shall certainly be queuing up for my copy. If you can't get to Kew then you can order it from G. Heywood Hill Ltd, 10 Curzon St, London W1J SHH. Tel: 0207 629 0647. There's a review of it here on the ArtPlantae Today website. 

Bobbi Angell wrote about him in volume 34 (2005) of the ASBA newsletter. The following link is to a .pdf of the newsletter and the article is on page 3 and page 6. Dianne Sutherland has written about vellum which includes a quote on how Rory McEwen worked from his brother John. Thank you to Coral Guest who suggested this in Aquatint from a gallery where he used to exhibit. If you are wondering how much one of his paintings would cost now if you wanted to buy one.... see here and here and here and here and here. I imagine his paintings will be worth more after the Kew exhibition. The Redoute paintings owned by Lord Hesketh that inspired the young Rory McEwen were sold recently and can be seen in this Southerby's catalogue starting at Lot 51.

And here is a letter where he writes of a visit to Bhutan; it's a long letter...make yourself a hot drink/glass of wine and get yourself comfortable before you start - actually I should have mentioned that at the top of the page really, shouldn't I?

There is Wikipedia page which mentions his music and how he influenced many other musicians. Marc Pavey has placed this clip of him singing on YouTube. There are some recordings of folk songs with his brother here at last.fm. Some of the TV programmes he made are listed on the IMDB. Some of his thoughts on Folk music can be found here. Jools Holland, whose favourite painting is this, made a programme about Rory's music which was broadcast on BBC Radio 2 on Monday April 1st at 11pm.

Rory McEwen also made modern artworks, nothing to do with plants; the Tate has two. There is a description of a video artwork he made here. Some images of his modern work can be seen here. He was involved in the idea to create clear Perspex Box Frames.

There is an exhibition of photographs by Karl Blossfeldt whose work inspired Rory McEwen at the Whitechapel Gallery in London until June 14th

The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh held his last retrospective exhibition in 1988 and there are five images from it here. They used to sell some posters and cards of his work in the shop - not sure whether they still do. This page lists library collections about him.

If you know of anything I've missed, then do let me know and I'll post it up here.

Martin

As Rory McEwen did a lot of his work on vellum, I thought I would try it myself and see what it is like to work on, so that I might better understand the technical difficulties of working on it when I look at his paintings.

I've used a type of vellum called Kelmscott from William Cowley and my normal paints and brushes.

I found it easy to use as I tend to paint on the dry side but I bet it's a nightmare if you are a wet painter because the paint lifts off so easily. The surface is very smooth and you can get very fine edges if you want them (although I chose to do a softer edge with this plum). The colour really does glow - I was very impressed with that.

I found getting bits of dust in my paint was a problem, though this may just be a reflection on my cleaning ability, and very rarely there was a very narrow line (like a scratch) across the painting which I think was something to do with the surface covering on this type of vellum.

Getting a good strong colour to look as though smoothly applied was tricky - I didn't quite achieve what I wanted but it wasn't as crucial for this painting as it might be for say a large simple rose petal.

So now I have some particular things I want to find out from the exhibition, which I find helps me to focus and not feel overwhelmed when I'm looking at lots of paintings.