Author: Andrea Watson

  • My life in the law world

    My life in the law world

    Memoirs of Danny Lyons ONE “Will you get those feelthy boots off!” I imagine my Great Grandma Bowe shouting as a 12-year-old boy tramped into the kitchen after a day herding pigs. Yet for all that young Paul, her second son, might be reeking of manure, he was also keeping the family out of the […]

  • Online shows are the new normal

    Online shows are the new normal

    Across the globe, museums have adapted to the new realities posed by the Covid pandemic. In many countries this means new lockdowns as governments battle to control infections. Many museums re-opened in the summer only to be forced to close again – one of the most important shows so affected was Artemisia at the National […]

  • World’s most creative homes revealed

    World’s most creative homes revealed

    Giverny in Normandy, where Claude Monet lived and painted for 43 years, was until this spring one of the most visited artists’ homes in the world. Up to 2,000 people passed through its brightly coloured rooms and famous gardens every day. Inevitably, this presented a problem as Giverny became a victim of its own success […]

  • It’s summertime in winter as museums reopen

    It’s summertime in winter as museums reopen

    Best art on show this winter

  • All that glisters….

    All that glisters….

    Andrea Marechal Watson reports on trends in the jewelley trade Early man believed that the strange bright stones they found in mountains and on river beds, created by mysterious underground forces, were somehow godlike. Countless legends spanning the world from ancient Greece to Australia share the idea that jewels are somehow of divine or superhuman […]

  • How Outsider Art became big business

    How Outsider Art became big business

    How Outsider Art has become big business

  • Gardening guru Randle Siddeley and his edible Chelsea designs

    Gardening guru Randle Siddeley and his edible Chelsea designs

    ANDREA MARECHAL WATSON on the work of garden designer Randle Siddeley In his 45 year career as a garden designer Randle Siddeley has seen most outdoor fashion come and many go. One of the newer trends is that of roof gardens – any area larger than a table cloth must now ideally be greened up […]

  • An Alice in Wonderland home

    An Alice in Wonderland home

    Skeel Library, Hampstead Manor From its literary origins as a school for young Edwardian ladies, there’s a touch of Alice in Wonderland in the newly restored Skeel Library, a Grade II-listed building that forms part of Mount Anvil’s award winning Hampstead Manor complex. Two years ago, Mount Anvil dived down the rabbit hole to begin […]

  • Pick of the spring art shows in 2020

    Pick of the spring art shows in 2020

    Andrea Marechal Watson takes a look at spring shows from London, Cambridge, Bonn, Vienna and, Washington DC and enters the magical world of the new Story Museum in Oxford Picasso and Paper Forgive a tiny quibble but this magnificent exhibition is far more than works on paper by Picasso and perhaps it’s why the show […]

  • Creativity?  It’s a rainbow pack of plastic toys

    Creativity? It’s a rainbow pack of plastic toys

    Grayson Perry: The Pre-Therapy Years has just opened at the Holburne Museum, Bath. The exhibition has instantly put this little known art collection on the international map as Andrea Marechal Watson discovers. Claire in a bus stop, courtesy of Andrew Gibson There are quite a lot of words and phrases that Grayson Perry doesn’t like. […]