Monday 15 March 2010

Lowry seascapes



Mills, clogs, whippets... the classic Lowry abounds aplenty at Manchester's Lowry Centre, which has, as one would expect, a definitive and insightful collection of the great man's paintings. It was only this weekend, though, that I was reminded of the spare simplicity and haunting hollowness of his seascapes, which previously rocked my world in Glasgow. There is something utterly absorbing about the white nothingness of the pictures, and I find myself sucked into them far more than I am into his Where's Wally-esque northern working scenes.

1 comment:

catherine said...

I discovered Lowry's sea paintings when working as poet in residence at Sunderland U's Glass department in 2005. I loved gazing out to sea from Roker's seafront, and managed to track down the window of his regular room in the seafront hotel: now part of a bigger reception room, but the then (young!) manager knew exactly where to take me. The hotel has many mementos of Lowry's regular visits in the last years of his life. I also tracked down the industrial stretches of the River Wear in nearby Sunderland - the industial bulidings long gone, but the curve of the river still unmistakeable.