Pandora’s Paintbox Pandora Sellars – Blue Water Lily, 1995, (Shirley Sherwood Collection) Scanning the paintings in Max’s magnificent morning room, Detective Inspector Henry Monk spots an incredible botanical watercolour… A watercolour painting of a flower may not sound the most eye catching of artworks, but only if you have not
Nestled in the heart of Aberfeldy is what I think is one of the world’s best bookshops. Now I know everyone thinks their favourite bookshop is world beating but this one has multiple awards to back me up! Opened by Michael Palin in 2005, The Watermill was voted Independent Bookshop
View of the Sea at Scheveningen, Vincent Van Gogh, August 1882 ‘The wind blew so hard that I could scarcely stay on my feet and could hardly see for the sand that was flying around,’ wrote Vincent Van Gogh to his brother, Theo. The result of his battle on windswept
Number one: The Bagpipe Player, Heinrich ter Brugghen Many paintings feature within the pages of Finding Vincent, my debut novel. Curating a world class art collection on behalf of my protagonist, Max Forsyth, has allowed me to “acquire” art from a broad range of genres. Each piece has a story
Caravaggio, Saint John the Baptist Reclining, 1610. Private Collection. Some muses are fleeting, others hang around. For me, Caravaggio falls into the latter category, persistently hovering in the shadows of my mind. I guess one should expect as much from a painter famous as a master of light and the
Self – Portrait, Vincent Van Gogh, 1887 No more writing. My keyboard is silent. Red, green and black pens rest in my tiny tweed pencil case with a tree shaped pin piercing its skin. Knowing when to stop working on a project is much more difficult than keeping going. My
One of the great things about being an artist and writer is that I can follow my muse wherever she takes me. Some days painting calls. Other days I just have to write. Over the last few weeks I have been finishing the portrait “Joy (Harry Potter)” which shows my
It’s blog time! I’m back at my desk after a very curious Easter break. Our holiday flew in, surprisingly. For us, enforced home time means all the jobs around the small-holding that never get tackled are actually getting done. Painting stables, cutting back overgrown bushes in the hen run, sorting
Sitting at my desk in this strange new world of “home schooling,” memories of my recent ski trip to the Aosta Valley in northern Italy feel distant and dislocated. I worked in Milan many years ago and my thoughts are with friends and ex-colleagues living in Lombardy, suffering terribly with
Kerry Cooper 