Solidarite with France

Sadly I know there are always nutcases and evil in the world and I know we need good security, I still don't believe bombs are an answer. I believe when women's voices are suppressed, as in Muslim countries and elsewhere, unhealthy societies result. Glad to read of Suu Kyi victory in Burma.Has the west not been bombing innocent children and women in the middle east too? No easy answers here.

I read that thousands of Scottish rugby fans are in Paris for a Glasgow Warriors Rugby game today. Bombs and killings are not a solution. There needs to be another way. My thoughts and prayers with those in Paris.

Scottish Women Artists Exhibition Edinburgh

Scottish Women Artists Exhibition Edinburgh - Painters and Sculptors 1885-1965 - 7th Nov 2015 − 26th June 2016; Modern Two (Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art)

Women artists in this exhibition will include - Bessie Mac Nicol, Phoebe Anna Traquair, Gertrude Alice Meredith Williams, Margaret Macdonald, Dorothy Johnstone and Hazel Amour, Phyllis Mary Bone, Joan Eardley and Bet Low.

The exhibition will focus on painters and sculptors and the period from 1885 to 1965. ,

(when Fra Newbery became Director of Glasgow School of Art, and until 1965, the year of Anne Redpath’s death).

The eighty years which lay between these events saw an unprecedented number of Scottish women train and practice as artists.  More than 90 works will be shown, from the National Galleries of Scotland’s holdings and other public collections from throughout the UK, as well as from private collections.

Early last century women were forbidden from attending life drawing classes. They also had to give up any art careers if they married. 

The conditions that the artists negotiated as students and practitioners due to their gender will be explored, shedding new light on this vital chapter of Scottish modern art history, whilst uncovering and celebrating women’s contribution to it.

The exhibition will include familiar masterpieces alongside important works by significant artists which are rarely seen and who are not widely known.

The galleries believe there is scope for more shows of female artists and the display is a precursor to a major re-think and re-hang of the gallery.

MY BLOG ON Women Artists - http://www.musicfootnotes.com/2014/10/woman-and-art.html

Modern Scottish Women will be accompanied by a book based on new research, as well as a free permanent collection display of prints by Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, selected from a recent gift of her work by The Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Charitable Trust.

Exhibition supported by The Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Charitable Trust and a sorority of women across Scotland

 Image: Dorothy Johnstone, Anne Finlay, 1920, Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums Collections © Courtesy of Dr DA Sutherland and Lady JE Sutherland 

 https://www.nationalgalleries.org/whatson/on-now-coming-soon/modern-scottish-women/

Montrose Enlightenment

Trip to Montrose and Stonehaven - 'I'll hae nae halfway-hoose, but aya be whaur/ Extremes meet.'

I visited Melrose museum which has some Celtic and Pictish relics – and the lady gave me a pamphlet on Montrose’s most famous son – the poet Hugh MacDiarmid - she said he had began a Scottish Enlightenment, a new Scottish Renaissance

He is one of Scotland’s leading contemporary poets and a founding member of Scotland’s national party. MacDiarmid grew up over a library. There were other writers in Montrose then such as the poet Edwin Morgan and Montrose became an artists colony and a  magnet for other artists, poets and writers. 

Christopher Grieve, the young reporter who arrived in Montrose in 1920, wanted to start a modern revolution in Scottish literature. 

Dunnottar castle

I also visited Stonehaven and took the walk along to the historic Dunnottar castle which sits on a rocky outcrop in the sea. The weather was beautiful blue skies. The castle was remote and practically impossible to penetrate and Cromwell, William Wallace and others stayed here. The castle was used to films such as Hamlet.

Stonehaven is a small picturesque fishing town. Here I visited a Celtic music shop where I bought a book on Burn’s songs. The harbour has several top rated hotels and restaurants. 

Also - Melrose’s golf course is one of the oldest and there its one of the best beaches in Scotland.  And The Cheviot and the Stag and the Black, Black Oil is being performed by the Dundee Rep.

Hugh MacDiarmid

His fascination with language inspired experimentation with Scots and Hugh MacDiarmid was born. Hugh MacDiarmid is remembered for his fiery and contradictory personality - his modernists and nationalist views and his long poems. He was the father of the Scottish Renaissance.

In the 1920s an important cultural Renaissance happened in Melrose. An Authentic cultural Scottish identity - creatively distinct.  MacDiarmid wished to create a Scottish cultural renaissance with a distinct Scottish art and cultural identity.

One that looked to the new rather than to the past traditions and to place Scottish culture in an international perspective.  Later during the 1930s the Scottish Renaissance was centred in St Andrews. The Scottish independence movement rejected the fascist nationalist movements in Europe. 

What began in Montrose in the 1920s Inspired a confidence for artists and writers to be Scots – a confidence which has helped to give Scotland a unique voice in the world. Our Scottish Renaissance.

Christopher Murray Grieve (1892 – 1978), known by his pen name Hugh MacDiarmid, was a Scottish poet, journalist, essayist and political figure. He is best known for his works written in 'synthetic Scots', a literary version of the Scots language hat MacDiarmid himself developed. 
After the war he continued to work as a journalist, living in Montrose where he became editor and reporter of the Montrose Review as well as a Justice of the Peace and a member of the county council. In 1923 his first book, Annals of the Five Senses,followed by 'Sangschaw' in 1925 and 'Penny Wheep' and his most famous poem 'A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle' in 1926.

Stonehaven

Gaelic Singers

Julie Fowlis

At Celtic Connections I have heard some of the most perfect Gaelic singers -

Karen Matheson, Julie Fowlis, Kathleen MacInnes.

They sing with pure tones in the lilting soft clarity.

I don’t speak any Gaelic but I appreciate the emotion in the songs.

Last year I heard yet another young Gaelic singer at Celtic late session -  Mischa Macpherson

Karen Matheson

Mischa Macpherson

It used to be that we were embarrassed by our Scots accents and the Scottish songs were portrayed as twee chocolate box White Heather club. It is so good to see Scots proud.

Dougie MacLean in an interview for the Herald spoke of his two grandparents who spoke Gaelic.

 When Dougie talks about the magic of songwriting, he knows what he is talking about  - his most famous song Caledonia - has become a music covered part of Scottish culture and has been sung by everyone from Frankie Miller to Ronan Keating.

"My grandparents were Gaelic speakers and my earliest memory is of my grandfather coming up from Dunkeld having had a few glasses of whisky and sitting in the kitchen singing his beautiful Gaelic songs, and the tears would be running down his face. In my family, singing songs was like eating, breathing and sleeping. I think Scotland has that desire to sing, because of that Gaelic heritage that permeates most of our culture.

"But to be able to sing, you need to have songs, and people have to write them. People here have long made their own songs, to sing in the fields or wherever. There's the wonderful traditions of, say, the north-east bothy ballads, of the Gaels making up songs for their work: it's only in modern times that you actually have the concept of the professional songwriter. It's sad we have lost that tradition, of people writing songs for themselves."