It is early morning, My Skype Interview with Sotheby’s will take place in a couple of hours. It was most comforting to awake to an email from CPI.
She: Do an amazingly perceptive but intellectual interview tomorrow!
Me: Thank you so much for your good wishes. I am strangely anxious..
I have been sent ten images and told that we ill be discussing during the interview. One is a photograph of a chair, the replica on one that sits in the lobby of my apartment building in Vancouver. The image did cause me to laugh out loud at the improbability of it all. I will be studying fine art and decorative design. The chair must be decorative design.
It is too early to go and get breakfast so blogging will help me pass the time. Partially in anticipation of the interview I have been reading book on the Watt’s Gallery. The book was purchased on a visit there – I recall that a couple gifted me with the paper back. The book was written by Richard Jeffries, the curator of the gallery located in Compton Surrey from 1989 until 2006. There is an inscription on the front.
Guildford 24/1/17 You are the most charming person I have ever met. Robes. (with a heart)
If I recall correctly Robes was a young bartender at the hotel. I guess his youth accounts for his impression of my charm. I am being entirely too dismissive, I was most flattered finding those words and the sentiment behind them. I made a trip to visit the gallery because I was enamoured with a painting and wanted to learn more.
What drew me to the Watt’s Gallery in 2017 was a painting in the Tate Britain which was incongruously called Hope, because it does not at all look very hopeful. I brought a post card of the picture with me but, at this moment, I cannot find it but I do know that there is a photograph of it amongst my images and it shall be attached to the blog. I was so moved by it and the sentiments behind it. The history was rather amazing – images of it were given to men returning from World War One. My Grandfather George Dryburgh would have received one as he served in a Scottish regiment. Thank goodness he survived – my father was born after the war so there would be no Alexis Dryburgh if not for Grandfather Dryburgh’s survival. Most days I am grateful to be around, not so much today because of my anxiety.
Mr. Jeffries writes of George Frederic Watts: “All his landscapes are an attempt to capture the feeling of the view or the situation, rather than record it leaf by leaf or twig by twig and sometimes he succeeds admirably. The more you look at them, the more you wonder just how he managed it, because often they’re quite simple, and often it is a case of what they used to call ‘art concealing art’. I also think some of his Biblical pictures are very fine, which is something of a contradiction, because he was at least an agnostic, and I think probably an atheist, but it’s the symbolism of them which inspires, the symbolism of the incident, and he manages to pinpoint it on the very pivot, in a way that he does with some of the mythological pictures like Orpheus and Eurydice. “ (pg.2-3)
Perhaps the words of the day can be agnostic and atheist. Agnostic: a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God. Atheist a person who disbelieves or lacks belief in the existence of God or gods.
My goodness this is a serious blog, not sure why. Yesterday was a rather strange day with some ups and downs and ups. The first up was a visit with friend Jennifer W., she drove to be with me from her home a couple of hours away. We laughed but she was so helpful on a very serious matter telling me not to worry about a situation that I was imagining. I usually do not indulge is useless worrying but was in this instance. The down, the disappointment was getting stood up – well not really and I guess it was a good cause but I was bitterly disappointed and actually angry because it has happened before. But if the guy had shown up this interchange would not have taken place. I was speaking to the receptionist of my beloved internist of about forty years.
Me: I just love him and where would I be without him?
She: He loves you too.
Another up was a cryptic email, an email not expected.
He: Thanks :).
Cryptic: Enigmatic, mysterious, hard to understand, confusing, mystifying, perplexing, puzzling, obscure, abstruse, arcane, oracular, Delphic, ambiguous, elliptical, oblique; informal as clear as mud. ANTONYMS straightforward, clear.
To explain why a mere thanks would be as clear as mud would be most difficult to explain and so no attempt will be made. .
