Visiting Artists 3
www.beckynuttall.com

One summer in the early sixties, three children travelled approximately 1,400 miles in the back of a mini to visit an artist.

In the grove the artist was installing a sculpture exhibition.

The children and their parents had come, with another family, to say hello. Three fathers; three artists: a potter/playwright, a sculptor and a painter. And that young artist, yet to wield the disappointing bristle brush, nurturing a talent with the 2HB.

The loveliness of the grove, the magnificence of the sculpture, the epic journey, the shady courtyards, the seeping conversations about art.

Art that sustained families, paid bills, decorated the house and illustrated the family to visitors.

The epic journey home , returning to the ebb and flow of the family, summer lawns, school beginnings and a baby sister;

and the young artist’s growing realisation that art lives in the world regardless of currency and commerce; art travels 1,400 miles in a mini and never leaves the house


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Visiting Artists: He Cometh to the Art School

Skip forward a few years and here she is, sweet sixteen; our young artist. Raised in the Sixties and living the Seventies. One day He cometh, the one raised in the Twenties and living the Reformation; he is ‘The Assessor’. He sallies forth into the studio and parks his tweed bum timidly against the desk; he measures her up a bit, taking in the merry oxford bags and platform heel; rolls his eyes over her a bit more; both measures and rolls his eyes over her life class work and says obscurely, ‘ Ladies shouldn’t wear trousers unless, of course, they are Marlene Dietrich’. With that he stands up straight, unbalancing the desk top, sending everything crashing to the floor. So here’s a thing: don’t wear trousers when painting naked women because it’s not ladylike; she’s still trying to figure out that one


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