Monday 27th July 2026, 12:27
The art gallery has a nice selection of Lowry paintings and sketches. It was interesting to see that he had a much wider range than the stereotypical matchstick men pictures that you would think were all he did if the mass media are to be believed.
Nonetheless it was one such picture that drew my eye. Or rather not exactly a picture but this relief
Here's Lowry's painting of the same scene from 1962
And another from 1964
I was rather curious about the relief because I was fairly sure that Lowry didn't do anything like that but it had no label.
So I went to ask the attendant at the desk by the entrance to the picture gallery. Before I could ask about the work she said how much she liked my style! When I asked about it it quickly became apparent that she had never been asked about it before and mistook my question to relate to one of the sketches. So she put her shoes on, remarking as she did that at home she never wears shoes and we walked to the items we respectively had in mind.
When we got to the relief she said she had no idea and that she would find out so she headed back to her desk and radioed someone. I carried on looking at the Lowrys.
When she came back we walked over to it and she said that it had been created in a workshop that the museum had funded for blind and partially sighted people and had been created by a blind person and a partially sighted one using paint and cloth which had then been preserved with resin.
I got the impression that she will organize a label for it.
Alongside the conversation about the art she complimented my earrings and my legs and declared that I reminded her of the sixties. She asked if this were my first visit to the museum and that lead to conversation about our lives; we are both widowed, she is sixty two and when the museum closes at the end of the year for a two year refurbishment she will retire and do as I do tour around seeing the sights.
I said I had been in Glasgow recently for a week and that started a conversation about the Necropolis and the museum of religion. I said I hadn't been to that one and she described where it was, I think I might have walked past it when I headed back to the West End after visiting the Necropolis. She went on to say that she had only had half a day in Glasgow and got there by bus from Edinburgh because that's where the train from Sunderland goes. She said she asked the driver what to go and see in Glasgow and he said how refreshing it was for someone to not just ask where the nearest Wetherspoons was!
As the conversation wound down and I was about to leave I remembered that I had felt annoyed by how one of the exhibits, Painkillers, was displayed. So I said to Deborah that I had a 'complaint' to make and pointed out that the artist had obviously intended people to closely examine the work but that the way it was presented made that impossible. Deborah said she didn't like it anyway but I have a suspicion that having it brought to her attention in this way might cause her to re-evaluate it.
I see now that I didn't photograph it. I'll have to go back and do that.
Here it is
It's not clear from my photographs but it and the other exhibits you can see in the background are in a huge glass enclosure so that was as close as I could get.
