Rory

Caroline, Agnes (and Ida) and I all went to see Rory Morrell's exhibition yesterday, at the Cheltenham School of Drawing and Painting, which he runs. It was a large show, filling three studios. There was a great variety of charcoal life drawings, all beautifully wrought. There's even one of Agnes, who has sat as a model for the Cheltenham School in the past.

But we also very much liked the oil landscapes of scenes near The Lizard and in Portugal. I fear not enough people knew about this excellent exhibition: there weren't that many red dots. This bit of publicity is too late, as the show closed yesterday evening.

Rory also showed me a folder of photographs he has taken: some of them are worthy of exhibition in their own right. As always, he was overly modest about them.

A quarter of a mile away, in the Gardens Gallery, Pam Stone has a solo show, contrasting but also worth seeing: some quite impressive portraits in a variety of media. That's on till next Tuesday evening, 26th August.

In London, Birmingham or Bristol, either of these shows would be getting quite a lot of attention: as Caroline always says - there's never much of a buzz created by anything here in Cheltenham.