A GARDEN STATE OF MIND

Over the years since I left a share house I have been telling everyone who would listen and many who would not how much I want a garden. I have even taken to sitting outside the front of my house to have BBQs on the street much to the amusement of my neighbors. Added to this I recently had an old friend visit me from Byron Bay, Australia and there is nothing like a person who lives in a tropical paradise to make you wonder why you live in a pokey flat in the grey urban sprawl. Lucky the Royal Academy of Arts came along with a job to salve my wounds, they had turned their galleries at Burlington House into sun drenched garden right in the center of London.

Their new exhibition "painting the modern garden" brings together painters from Monet to Matisse and styles all the way from impressionism to avant garde, all influenced by the gardens right outside their doors. These painter's work so usually surrounded by the white space and hushed silence accorded to great artists are here surrounded by greenhouses of colourful flowers and park benches giving you the feeling that you are no longer in a gallery or indeed in London at all. As you reach you the end of this peaceful, garden path, you are presented with the star of the show Water Lilies, 1916-26 by Claude Monet here as a triptych for the first time in Europe since it left his studio. Imposing it most certainly is but presented here without frames it feels like a floor to ceiling window out into nature. Maybe London is not so bad after all, we are all in need of space and real nature but having some of the world greatest artists bring you their view of it is pretty much the next best thing.