Happy Halloween

An armchair calls for a story. And a story calls for an armchair.

This woodcut by Vanessa Bell was made as a frontispiece for Virginia Woolf's short story, A Haunted House.

The story and the woodcut both display economy of line, yet each possesses a certain haunting power.

Are you sitting comfortably?
You can read the story here.

A Matter of Style

Welcome to Goldmark Picks. Forget The Salon, where better to begin our artistic small talk than a trip to the salon? Take a look at Dora Holzhandler's At the Hairdressers: the relaxed, feminine environment sends out the scent of lavender. The women, each occuping a position on the tilted chessboard floor, are not here to play strategic games but rather to enjoy what appears to be a collective activity where even the blonde's reflection is included in the (social) circle. Take a peek next door, though, and you get a different scene. Here at Mr Snips (by Mr George Large) steam rollers and grease are not altogether distant from their mechanical counterparts. The hairdresser is a monolith, wielding the comb with extraorinary purpose (would you dare tell her you wanted a trim, not a perm?). She is at work. And so are the colours and angles which interact with each other to create the sense of drama we can't help but feel a part of. So, similar subject; two very different treatments. You can find out more about each artist's range of oils here.