After a brief sojourn to look after Jo, my wife, whose appendix became infected and had to be removed - bearing in mind that she's four months pregnant so the operation was a little more precarious than normal - I can return to this blog...

My intention here is to use this blog as a resource and virtual workbook to hold some of the research and ideas I've had whilst surfing the digital world for things to do with the projects I'm currently completing at college www.tameside.ac.uk

I am researching the Impressionist - that lively band of Parisian artists who turned the art world upside down in the middle of the 19th century. Has any art movement been as influential as the Impressionists? Probably not. They were a disparate group without a singular objective and certainly with no manifesto as later art movements had, but it was their reaction to the modern world and their desire to place their work in the public domain as the equal of the art of the Salon that led to Impressionism becoming so widely known even to this day.

Controversy, everybody loves a good controversy. Art ever since seems to have wanted a bit of controversy to get itself noticed... from Surrealism to Damien Hirst, from Bauhaus to the Chapman brothers.