Dappled brushwork, delicate hues and cloisonné textures dance across the surfaces of Cranston's still lives, landscapes and interiors Scottish painter Andrew Cranston (born 1969) creates transporting images that destabilize our sense of time: they invite the viewer to explore a space between nostalgia and the realm of the dream. Dense blots of oil graze on top of washes of distemper, guiding the viewer's eye through thick and thin layers of pigment. The paintings gathered in Waiting for the Bell conjure a state of liminality--the feeling of being suspended in a dream before the alarm jolts one back to reality--and draw from stories, poems and experiences that emerge from the artist's subconscious. Each painting's layering is guided by intuition: a reference to a Carole King album cover is interlaced alongside allusions to jazz history, the writing of Muriel Spark and visions of the Scottish coast. This substantial volume includes newly commissioned essays by Stephanie Burt and Barry Schwabsky.

Andrew Cranston once described himself as a storyteller of sorts, though without a clear story to tell. He draws on a variety of sources including personal recollections – family histories; his circuitous route to art school via an initial, unsuccessful, foray into carpentry; and his 25-year association as both student and lecturer at Gray's School of Art in Aberdeen. Interwoven with passages culled from literature, anecdotes, jokes, and images from cinema these elements combine to make his idiosyncratic, intimate, and often dream-like, paintings. But the dream had no sound is the largest exhibition of Andrew Cranston’s work to date. It is accompanied by a 164pp publication, available for purchase, featuring an interview between the artist and his friend and colleague, painter Peter Doig. The book also includes over 60 illustrations - each with notes written by the artist - revealing the thoughts and associations that emerge in the process of making a painting.--Ingleby Gallery website.

This monograph, published to accompany Housley s solo exhibition of paintings at the Reg Vardy Gallery, 2005, is the result of a year-long residency at Durham Cathedral. Painting, for Housley, is a "dumb muse": a medium which, whilst only able to offer still, silent and hand-made single images, is also able to offer the most complex, nuanced and double-edged forms of visual experience. Working on an intimate scale, Housley's images elicit an unlikely poignancy and tenderness from subject matter that might initially seem to offer slight returns.

Set in mid-19th century Ayrshire, in the fictitious town of Barbie the novel The House with the Green Shutters (1901) describes the struggles of a proud and taciturn carrier, John Gourlay, against the spiteful comments and petty machinations of the envious and idle villagers of Barbie (the "bodies"). The sudden return after fifteen years' absence of the ambitious merchant, James Wilson, son of a mole-catcher, leads to commercial competition against which Gourlay has trouble responding.

“Nothing short of riveting...an engrossing first-person account by one of our finest actors” (Huffington Post)—both a coming-of-age story and a meditation on creativity, devotion, and craft—Bryan Cranston, beloved and acclaimed star of one of history’s most successful TV shows, Breaking Bad. Bryan Cranston began his acting career at the age of seven, when his father, a struggling actor and sometime director, cast him in a commercial for United Way. By fifth grade he was starring in the school play, spending hours at the local movie theater, and re-enacting favorite scenes with his brother in their living room. Cranston seemed destined to be an actor. But then his father left. And his family fell apart. Troubled by his father’s missteps, Cranston abandoned his acting aspirations and resolved to pursue a steadier career in law enforcement. Then, on a two-year cross-country motorcycle journey, Cranston re-discovered his talent for acting and found his mission and his calling. In this “must-read memoir” (The Philadelphia Inquirer), Cranston traces the many roles he inhabited throughout his remarkable life, both on and off screen. For the first time he shares the story of his early years as an actor on the soap opera Loving, his recurring spots on Seinfeld, and his time as bumbling father Hal on Malcolm in the Middle, to his tour-de-force, Tony-winning performance as Lyndon Baines Johnson in Broadway’s All the Way, to his most iconic role of all: Breaking Bad’s Walter White. “An illuminating window into the actor’s psyche” (People), Cranston has much to say about creativity, devotion, and craft, as well as innate talent and its challenges and benefits and proper maintenance. “By turns gritty, funny, and sad” (Entertainment Weekly), ultimately A Life in Parts is a story about the joy, the necessity, and the transformative power of simple hard work.

Newsweek calls him “exhilarating and deeply engaging.” Time Out New York calls him “smart, provocative, and a great writer.” Critic Peter Schjeldahl, meanwhile, simply calls him “My hero.” There’s no one in the art world quite like Dave Hickey—and a new book of his writing is an event. 25 Women will not disappoint. The book collects Hickey’s best and most important writing about female artists from the past twenty years. But this is far more than a compilation: Hickey has revised each essay, bringing them up to date and drawing out common themes. Written in Hickey’s trademark style—accessible, witty, and powerfully illuminating—25 Women analyzes the work of Joan Mitchell, Bridget Riley, Fiona Rae, Lynda Benglis, Karen Carson, and many others. Hickey discusses their work as work, bringing politics and gender into the discussion only where it seems warranted by the art itself. The resulting book is not only a deep engagement with some of the most influential and innovative contemporary artists, but also a reflection on the life and role of the critic: the decisions, judgments, politics, and ethics that critics negotiate throughout their careers in the art world. Always engaging, often controversial, and never dull, Dave Hickey is a writer who gets people excited—and talking—about art. 25 Women will thrill his many fans, and make him plenty of new ones.

Toller Cranston was an influential Canadian figure skater and painter. He won the 1971 - 1976 Canadian national championships, the 1974 World bronze medal and the 1976 Olympic bronze medal. The final two decades of his extraordinary life were spent in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. This book offers some vivid and intimate glimpses into the world of a complex, larger than life personality.