I GET HONORABLE MENTION AWARD AT CAVA "ARCHITECTURAL ELEMENTS" EXHIBITION AT BRIDGEPORT ART CENTER

Photo by Pat Clark

I was very pleased and honored last night when my painting Belhaven Rooftops, Glasgow was given an Honorable Mention Award at the Chicago Alliance of Visual Artists exhibition ARCHITECTURAL ELEMENTS at the Bridgeport Art Center, 1200 W. 35th Street in Chicago.  The show will be up through January 30, 2018.  Gallery hours are 8am to 6pm Monday through Saturday and 8am to noon Sunday.  You can see a better picture of this painting from my "Traveler's Sketchbook" series if you scroll down a few posts.   

GEORGE SQUARE, GLASGOW

George Square, Glasgow, 15 x 10 inch ink, watercolor and colored pencil by George C. Clark   AVAILABLE

I drew this one afternoon last July in George Square in the heart of Glasgow's Merchant City.  That imposing building houses the City Chambers.  The column at the right is topped by a statue of Sir Walter Scott, the novelist.  Sir Walter is topped by a seagull, as are most of the statues in Glasgow.  An exception is the equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington in front of the Gallery of Modern Art, which is topped by an orange traffic cone.  I kid you not.

ROOFTOPS OF BELHAVEN TERRACE, GLASGOW

Belhaven Rooftops, Glasgow, 16 x 10 inch ink and watercolor by George C. Clark   AVAILABLE

One of the reasons for my 3-week visit to Scotland this summer was to attend the wedding festivities for my sister's stepdaughter.  She and her new husband live and work in London, but planned this destination wedding in his hometown of Glasgow, Scotland.  We stayed at the Belhaven Hotel, which occupies a lovely Edwardian building in the West End of Glasgow near the wedding venue.  Picture Belhaven Terrace as an oval street of outward-facing buildings squashed flat to run parallel to the Great Western Road.  The Belhaven Hotel is on the north-facing side of the terrace and looks over the Terrace, a narrow parkway, and then the Great Western Road.  The back of the hotel, where my room was located, looks over a low outbuilding toward the backs of the houses on the south-facing side of Belhaven Terrace.  One afternoon I opened the window and spent some time drawing this view. 

This painting is in my current exhibition at 3 Crowns Park Gallery.  See previous post for details. 

ON THE WATERFRONT IN OBAN, SCOTLAND

Oban, Scotland Waterfront, 14 x 10 inch ink and watercolor by George C. Clark   AVAILABLE

Oban is a port city on the west coast of the Scottish Highlands facing the Isle of Mull.  It has a square harbor lined with old buildings including this elegant hotel constructed (according to a terra-cotta relief on its facade) in 1902.  The tide was out when I made this drawing and the blue-hulled salvage boat was resting on the harbor floor with its stern almost out of the water.  On a pier to the left of the hotel are two modern restaurants, one Scottish and one Italian, both featuring super-fresh seafood.  I ate at both of them more than once.  On the other side of the harbor, behind the ferry terminal, is a take-away shop where you can get hot local seafood for a fraction of restaurant prices if you don't mind eating standing up outdoors.  A platter of mussels boiled in wine broth was a little over $5 US (3.95 British pounds).

This is one of the new paintings that will be featured in my exhibition TRAVELER'S SKETCHBOOK: Paintings and Graphics by George C. Clark at the Three Crowns Park Gallery in Evanston in November.  I will post the formal announcement with full details here soon.

SAVE THE DATE: There will be an artist's reception on Thursday afternoon, Nov. 2, from 4-6pm.

George C. Clark drawing the Oban waterfront

MULL CAR FERRY DOCKED IN OBAN, SCOTLAND

Isle of Mull Car Ferry Docked in Oban, Scotland, 12 x 10 inch ink drawing on cream paper by George C. Clark    AVAILABLE

Here is another page from my Scotland sketchbook.  This shows one of the big Cal-Mac car ferries that connect the Isle of Mull in the Hebrides with the Scottish mainland.  Oban is a good-sized town for the thinly-populated Highlands.  It has a busy port and bills itself both as "the gateway to the Hebrides" and "the seafood capital of Scotland" and it is correct on both counts.  The tide was out when I did this drawing and a lone heron was patrolling the exposed seafloor for edible creatures stranded in the tidal pools.