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The Big Draw

So what is The Big Draw? It's the world's biggest drawing festival from The Campaign for Drawing and on Wednesday it came to the Swindon Museum and Art Gallery courtesy of the artists from Artsite. 

Whilst in the art gallery I took the opportunity to talk to the conservators working on more than 30 paintings by Kate Tryon, an American devotee of Richard Jefferies. I was interested to learn that many of the frames were originally gilded but sometime in their history they had been painted over. A similar story to some of the portraits in Lydiard House whose frames received a coat of white paint, which has since turned grey from the smoke from open fires.

 I very much enjoyed the ceramic exhibition From Where I'm Standing inspired by the Swindon Museum and Art Gallery collection. I found the work by Keith Varney reminiscent of Edmund de Waal's only to be told that SM&AG holds work by this prestigious ceramicist too. Is there no limit to the treasures contained in Apsley House?

 So why no photos of The Big Draw? I'm leaving that to Artsite's Vicki Silver. But here is one of my little granddaughter Tilly getting to grips with hieroglyphics.






















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