Characters in storybooks can be many things – heroes, villains, friends, and mentors. But they can also serve as a guide – not only through a story, but in a story as they help us explore different aspects of life beyond our experience. James Mayhew’s Katie is just this, ushering us simultaneously through Katie’s Picture Show (2014) and Continue reading
A true artist is not one who is inspired, but one who inspires others.
― Salvador Dali
Barcelona, a fountain of courtesy, shelter of strangers, hospice to the poor, land of the valiant, avenger of the offended, reciprocator of firm friendship, a city unique in its location and beauty.
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote, 1605
Half term took us to the wonderful Barcelona for a few days, both “unique in its location and beauty” as Don Quixote exclaimed. Of course this was centuries before four great masters of modern art, Gaudí, Miró, Picasso and Dalí added their creativity to the city. Continue reading
“Rome, the city of visible history.”
— George Elliot
If you follow us on Instagram you’ll know that we’ve just got back from an amazing few days in Rome. George Elliot is spot on. Rome certainly is “the city of visible history”. Wherever we looked – whether up at the domes, down the cobbled alleyways or strolling around the Colosseum – history was there.
Turner has some golden visions, glorious and beautiful. They are only visions, but still, they are art, and one could live and die with such pictures.
—John Constable on the 1828 Royal Academy Exhibition.
The latest exhibition to come to our local museum, the Ashmolean, is ‘America’s Cool Modernism’.
So for our ‘artist of the term’ we have Continue reading
Every child should leave school with at least a couple of hundred pictures by great masters hanging permanently in the halls of his imagination . . .
— Charlotte Mason
Last term our ‘artist of the term’ was the magnificent Michelangelo di Ludovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475-1564). This was a treat, if a little brief for such an artistic giant – sculptor, painter, architect and poet.
If you’ve been watching the news recently you will have noticed that The Bayeux Tapestry is coming to Britain in 2020. There has been great excitement in our house since we heard, as we are right in the middle of studying the Norman Conquest of 1066. Continue reading
Happy New Year!
Many of us are making resolutions and hoping to try new things as we plan for 2018. One thing I was reflecting on as I looked back on last term was that museum trips and art exhibitions were real highlights in our homeschooling life. Continue reading
CLASSICALLY CURIOUS 