Arts | Jackie Kemp

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Vettriano not for the snobbish

Though ridiculed by critics, artist’s work is honest, with an authentic, working-class sensibility, writes Jackie Kemp

From The Scotsman, October 25.

WHAT on earth is happening at Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow? It is mid-morning on a weekday but the car parks are overflowing. Cars are jinking about, competing for any vacated space. The art gallery itself is hotching. There are actual traffic jams in front of certain pictures and there is a queue at the till in the exhibition shop. The postcard rack is half empty and the limited edition prints are flying off the shelves.

The public response to Jack Vettriano’s first major retrospective is a marked contrast to the funereal atmosphere of the big empty rooms at this year’s Edinburgh International Festival exhibition of the recent work of Peter Doig, a commercially successful painter whose massive and anodyne, though slapdash, landscapes would be a safe bet for decorating the foyer of any corporate headquarters in Zurich.

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Great Tapestry tells Scotland’s story with embroidery and elan

The rich tapestry of Scotland’s past, long neglected, downplayed and overshadowed, is finally being given the prominence and attention it deserves, writes Jackie Kemp Published in the Scotsman op-ed section, September 3, 2013

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The Great Tapestry of Scotland

A slightly shortened version of this arrticle appeared in the Herald magazine on Saturday, August 24,2013. Photos are available to view on the website

http://www.alexhewitt.co.uk/gallery-list

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Literature doesn’t need more cheerleaders

Rosemary Goring’s take on the Creative Scotland debate from the Herald Saturday arts section September 22, 2012

“There is no such thing as art. There are only artists,” said E H Gombrich in The Story of Art. It’s a dictum that the architects of Creative Scotland should have noted. Much of the firestorm that has engulfed that beleaguered institution of late might have been averted if its apparatchiks had had the wisdom and humility to appreciate that the state’s function in funding the arts is solely to disburse money to artists in the most effective and simple manner possible.

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National Theatre of Scotland accused of ignoring classic Scots drama

Critics say NTS management is stuck in the present and using government money to undermine the language. Observer March 26.

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Curse of Glencoe tempts William Dalrymple

Travel writer is turning his attention to the family legacy from the Times Dec 24

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Anne Fine deplores ‘gritty realism’ of modern children’s books

The Times – August 25, 2009
by Jack Malvern and Jackie Kemp

Former Children’s Laureate Anne Fine said that modern stories offered little hope for their protagonists

Former Childrens laureate Anne Fine reads to children from Hermitage Park School, Leith

(Colin Hattersley)

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Scottish designer’s art for windows

As a child, Sarah Campbell spent her summer holidays on the Isle of Lismore. On walks, she and her artist mother would pick tufts of sheep’s wool from the barbed wire fences and take it home. There they would wash, card and spin it, turn it into fabric on a loom and dye it.

Now working as a designer, Sarah has woven those childhood lessons into the one-off “textile paintings” doubling as window blinds that she creates in her workshop on the tiny island which sits under the mountains of Morvern in the Firth of Lorne for her company Mogwaii Design.

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A new system for reading music

Every Good Boy Deserves Failure. And All Cows End Gorily – or is it Eat Grass? Generations of children have struggled over mnemonics designed to help them translate five black lines and a series of dots into music. Some accomplish this feat; some – like me – remember little except these disjointed sentences. But that could soon be history, according to a charity that’s introducing a music notation system to the UK from Finland that is accessible enough for the youngest children to understand. “A revolution in music education is under way,” says Brian Cope, of Drake Music Scotland.