Remembrance Sunday: Stanley Spencer - Map Reading

Twentieth Century English war art has had a profound affect on me down the years. That inter-war generation of artists are the foundation of my aesthetic, and the inhuman and brutalised aspect of pictures of the Flanders front speaks to me. I don't think that's quite right for Remembrance Sunday though, so here is a picture where the humanity of the participants is still intact.

Here in Salonika, half a continent away from the mud which usually dominates British depictions of the war, a patrol rests amongst the flowers while their officer, on horseback, consults a map. One soldier feeds the the horse while others fettle their kit, doze or pick flowers and berries. The little moments of domesticity, the pauses, the menial chores were the things the soldiers lived for, the blessed relief of the ordinary and the quiet.

Spencer spent six years beginning in 1927 producing a whole suite of paintings of his memories of service in Macedonia and in hospitals for a chapel dedicated to the forgotten dead. The Sandham Memorial Chapel is at Burghclere near Newbury and the scenes are, as with much of Spencer's work, treading a line between the domestic and the religious and they avoid depicting the fighting itself. Many of the pieces are set in mess halls and hospitals. Spencer wanted to remember the people, not the war itself.

The chapel is being restored at the moment, so the paintings have come to London. "Heaven in a Hell of War" is at Somerset House until 26 January.

Tomorrow, Armistice Day itself, I will take you across the North Sea to Germany for very different but equally human reaction to the war.

New website

I've been busy! I have a new website. As my work has evolved the gallery in the old one just wasn't up to the job. You'll find:

• Bigger pictures
• Better for mobiles and big screens
• The beginnings of a bit of integration with social media

all wrapped up with some pretty typefaces - what did you expect? I'm an artist. It'll evolve a bit in the coming weeks with some more pictures and an extra page but I wanted it up and running.

I've tested as best I can, but I'd be really grateful if you'd let me know if it doesn't work on your machine. I'm also open to suggestions for a better tagline!

Return to Ankerwycke

I was going to post some paintings of fireworks today but almost everything I found was pretty lame. There's more to fireworks to colour and sunburst shapes - where are the movement and the energy and the violence and temperature and the gone-in-a-heartbeat qualities of them?

So anyway, I've been back to Ankerwycke to see what its like in autumn, so you'll have to  make do with that instead!

It still carries an overwhelming sense of strangeness. I know I'm not the only person to think this; people keep leaving things and placing things and rearranging fallen wood so I guess they not only know the strangeness but they like it and choose to add to it. I think I've worked something out about the place; it has the same effect on me as whisky. Whisky is one of very few things I won't drink, because it amplifies my moods. Ankerwycke has this same power; it can draw out my sadness or my curiosity or the simple pleasure I take in being or whatever else I'm feeling.

Letting Parliament burn with JMW Turner

I don't know how well known it is across the rest of the world, but this is the time of year when an Englishman's thoughts turn to anarchy and we either celebrate an attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament and all those who sail in her - most especially the King - or it's thwarting, according to taste and whether we're Protestant or Catholic. Take a bow, Guy Fawkes.

Anyway, one night in 1834 and not as anything to do with Bonfire Night, the Houses of Parliament did burn down. Like the last few years, it was a time when politicians were at worst reviled and best held in contempt so huge crowds gathered, getting in the way and cheering as bits collapsed.

Turner was based just up the road so he sallied forth. Some accounts say he gathered together some students, hired a boat and watched the proceedings from the Thames, others that he stuck to the opposite bank of the river. Either way he was drawing and taking notes all night long. That sketchbook lead to these watercolours which in turn lead to some highly finished oils. Apart from the subject, the interesting thing for me is just how far down the road to abstraction he was here, as the subject is just an excuse for new combinations of paint, light, colour and half-defined forms.

As far as I know pretty much all of this set of watercolours and the associated sketchbooks are in the Tate's collection, and there is usually a selection from it in the Clore wing of Tate Britain.

Jan Van Der Velde: The Sorceress

Since it's Halloween, here is a glorious engraving from 1626.

I found it on this page; you won't find a much better overview of art's depiction of witchcraft at a time when there was widespread belief in it. Thank you Dr Booth!