Walker Gallery, Liverpool, 23rd February

Today I visited the galleries up in Liverpool. It was a very busy and tiring day, however I feel like I have gotten a lot out of it.

Firstly I made my way to the Walker Gallery. I was impressed by all the architecture up there, it was beautiful and reminded me on Edinburgh with the dark yellowy stone and the long columned buildings. Also the stone flagged pavements and square made me very happy.

In the Walker there were a few exhibitions on. The first I looked round on the ground floor was called Feathercut and Flares, which included a variety of outfits and films from the 70s. This interested me a lot because I was with my mum and she remembers people wearing these clothes. To me they almost look like a costume, and it is hard for me to imagine my parents wearing these because they seem like they are from another time. On the ground floor of the Walker there was also an exhibition of pottery which was intriguing because I am from near the the Potteries in Stoke so I feel a connection to the stone wear when I see it. In the far corner of the room, there was a necklace which was made up of Rhino horn and butterfly wings from the early part of last Centuary. It was interesting because it played with my morals somehow. Because on the one hand it was beautiful and the craftsman had used all natural components, and one the other those animals were most likely killed just for this accessory.

Upstairs were exhibitions by Henry Matisse, and John Kirkby. I found these to give me polar opposite responses. I loved Matisse's delicate and flowing lines. The drawings seemed to ooze confidance and I couldnt understand how the artist had managed to represent a recognizable form in so little marks. There were also pages from Matisse's Jazz book. The colours were so bright that they draw you in. I'm not a fan of using colour in my own work, however I always seem to be drawn to other peoples bright colours. In this book there was also more representation of nature rather than the human or animal form and I must say that interests me more.

The next room on was John Kirkby's the living and the dead exhibition. I found this a lot harder to look round than Matisse. It had too sombre a mood for me and I couldn't relate to the subject matter or the colours in any major way.