The Sir Peter Blake Retrospective at Tate Liverpool is an awesome show, aside from his excellent Oil works from across his career they’re showing “Summer with the brotherhood” – a film made when I was about 4, so despite my interest had no idea had been made. It explores the motives and meaning behind the Ruralist ideal, and shows Peter Blake, David Inshaw, Graham and Ann Arnold, Graham and Annie Ovenden at work on some of their finest paintings. I must get a copy of this from somewhere.

Exactly a year ago, I saw the Ruralist exhibition at WHM Devizes, and had the pleasure of meeting Graham Arnold at Avebury’s Cove. In the film, Graham Arnold is seen putting painstaking preparation and painterly detail into ‘Warminghurst Church’. The reproductions of this painting in “Ruralists:A Celebration” do not do justice to the scale and the work involved, but I find that in all their work, from Inshaw’s enormous paintings to Annie Ovenden’s haunting pencil works of trees.

A final word on the Tate show is that the guide leaflet has been largely written by Blake himself, which makes it alot more useful, lively and insightful than usual, especially when you reach the final room.