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Birgidale Writers’ Group visits The Glasgow Boys
On Friday 21st May, to celebrate Adult Learners' Week, Carolyn Foran, Education Officer from Kelvingrove Museum, visited The Birgidale Writers' Group in Castlemilk.
The group love an audience for their work and were delighted to welcome Carolyn who enjoyed an hour of listening to the stories and poems the members of the group had written, including a very lovely story based on the lyrics of The Eagles famous song "Hotel California" and a moving story of one man's journey through childhood into adulthood recounting some of the incidents and scrapes in his life that were provoked by his given name, Randal.
Carolyn delivered a great presentation on The Glasgow Boys: Pioneering Painters, on show until September at Kelvingrove Museum.
The group learned who the Glasgow Boys were and a little about the times they lived in and the history surrounding their particular style of painting. They learned that the Glasgow Boys were revolutionary and radical in what they were doing at the time, moving from classical painting to realism, depicting everyday rural scenes of village and country life.
We learned that the Glasgow Boys were supported by rich merchants from Glasgow at the time, including William Burrell, how Henry and Hornel were supported to travel to and paint in Japan, and how "The Boys" set up an artists' colony in many parts of Scotland and Europe where they painted scenes of everyday life outdoors, a style heavily influenced by the French painter of the time, Bastien Lepage.
The Birgidale Writers' group then looked at copies of the Glasgow Boys' paintings and went on to produce creative writing pieces based on a particular painting of their choice.
A week later the group visited the exhibition at Kelvingrove Museum where they were made welcome by the Museum staff, given a short tour of the exhibition and read aloud their work, which you can see here, alongside the painting that had inspired their writing.
Jim, who chose "Seaside Cottages with Dovecote" by Edward Arthur Walton said:
"I looked at it on the internet and I looked at the copy Carolyn had brought from Kelvingrove and I saw different detail in both. I'm really looking forward to going to Kelvingrove to see the real thing. I'm going to encourage my wee art group to come to the exhibition, I think they'd really enjoy it".
John chose "Playmates" by George Henry and said:
"I would have looked at the painting and just walked on but because we had the workshop on the Glasgow Boys, I saw more in the painting and wrote about how it reminded me of my two daughters playing when we they were young."
Anne said "The Train Station" by William Kennedy "reminded me of when we all used to go to Saltcoats when I was young. My dad used to tell us to go into a compartment and jump about and make a noise so that no one else would come in that compartment and we would have it to ourselves".
The Birgidale Creative Writers' group meet every Friday morning at The Birgidale Centre in Castlemilk. If you would like to join the group or want to find out more about them, please call Claire Bradley on 0141 276 1700.