Last Saturday we enjoyed a day out in Lark Lane and Sefton Park, today it was Speke Hall.
Its a bit sad isn’t it that I’ve lived in this area almost all my life and never been inside this splendid and interesting place but as soon as I heard there was an art exhibition I leap into the car and zoom along the Aigburth Road.
The grounds are beautiful, spoilt only slightly by the noise of planes taking off from the adjacent airport and the house and its history is fascinating. It was good to see so many people including families with young children taking advantage of what must be one of a very few National Trust places to be so close to a large city centre.
Takumasa Ono was born in Tokyo but now lives in Gloucestershire and has been touring the National Trust properties to create his distinctive paintings using Japanese Ink and silk screen techniques. Today and next Saturday (April 7th) he runs a one-hour workshop demonstrating ‘Sumi-e’ (ink painting).
An exhibition ‘HENRO’ of his works which includes pictures of Liverpool and Tokyo as well as National Trust places is running here until April 15th 2007 in the Education Rooms before moving onto other NT properties The overlap of traditional Japanese painting and Tudor buildings is certainly different.
Takumasa also runs workshops for schools and has published books on Sumi-e.
