Tag archives for Robin Holtom
Take a Chance on Me
ROBIN HOLTOM Arthur Ransome, the author of the well-known children’s series Swallows and Amazons, had a very interesting early life. Among other things, he was a reporter for the Manchester…
Inseminating an Intelligent Artifice
ROBIN HOLTOM admits to some juvenile confusion concerning the facts of life I was living on a small dairy farm when I first heard the term AI. At the age…
Trumping the Lord of Misrule
ROBIN HOLTOM muses on medieval customs that he believes are being unwittingly aped by the incoming incumbent of the White House It is a curious coincidence that the storming of…
Deus Ex Machina
ROBIN HOLTOM argues that through AI we have created machines that feed on people, making us in real danger of obsolescence I was in London’s Marlborough Gallery looking at photographic…
Surprise Surprise
ROBIN HOLTOM My art teacher wrote on the art room wall, in his excellent italic script, the following quotation from Leonardo da Vinci; “It is a poor pupil who does…
Class and Mobility
ROBIN HOLTOM The Independent Inspector of Borders and Immigration, David Neal, recently revealed that 10 private planes a day arrive in London without proper passport checks. He was sacked the…
Must It Be Done?
ROBIN HOLTOM recalls how Robert Oppenheimer described inventing the atom bomb as ‘technically sweet’, and wonders how this concept might apply to other technological advances. At the end of the…
The Scoundrel’s Plea
ROBIN HOLTOM argues that William Blake’s epithet ‘the general good is the plea of the scoundrel’ supports the view that Medical Ethics has become separated from Ethics generally. The chaplain…
Gifting a Noun
ROBIN HOLTOM Over Christmas, I heard people write and speak of ‘gifting’ something instead of giving it. This use of language is disconcerting. It seems to emphasise the thing as…
Invasion of the Dead Cats
ROBIN HOLTOM was struck by a line in the evidence of Dominic Cummings to the Covid Enquiry: “At one point in the autumn he told me to figure out how…
The Studio Couch
ROBIN HOLTOM on Freud’s couch and the Art of Life drawing Some time ago I acquired a couch for my studio. My elegant couch is quite narrow and scarcely has…
In Praise of Digital Dyslexia
ROBIN HOLTOM Ba Kode I have a condition that might be described as Digital ;I panic when a computer announces that I have forgotten my password or, worse still, when I have performed an ‘illegal operation’.…
Porky Parable
By Robin Holtom Reading that the People’s Republic of China is building a 26-storey factory farm for 650,000 pigs, I am reminded of Charles Lamb’s essay on Roast Pork. “Mankind,…
Painting and the Market
A personal view by Robin Holtom When I was training in painting, a common rebuke was that our work was ‘illustrational’ rather than ‘painterly’. Painters were expected to produce much larger…
BOOK REVIEW: The Real Anthony Fauci
Bill Gates, Big Pharma and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health By Robert Kennedy JrSkyhorse publishing Review by Robin Holtom At the beginning of the pandemic a friend…
Art for HIP’s Sake
By Nick Pelling Sometimes artists get a bad press. They are occasionally depicted as narcissistic types obsessed with their own ideas and neurotic about reviews and, of course, sales. But…
Return to the wild
St Leonards residents Robin and Rachel Holtom visit Knepp Knepp Wildland is an inspirational environmental project near Horsham in West ; In the early 2000s Charlie Burrell and his wife…
Still Watching Paint Dry
Paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints By Robin Holtom ‘Still Watching Paint Dry’ will coincide with Robin Holtom’s 75th birthday and features a variety of work from his long career as an…
Festival 15
Dave Young meets Matthew Burrows – curator of the forthcoming Hastings Art Forum anniversary exhibition “A contemporary painting show, to demonstrate the work of significant artists living or connected to…