Mo Burns

A beautiful book

Sculpture of a half naked middle-aged bald man looking in the mirror. Photographer also visible

José Belmonte artwork with selfie
Centro Cultural Casa de Vacas, Madrid
October 2025

#selfreflection
#retiropark
#madrid
#maninthemirror
#art
#sculpture

Audio Book cover of On Chapel Sands by Laura Cumming

Just returned from my first visit since '92 to the Prado to see the Velázquez, inspired by The Vanishing Man. Fairly sure the room was almost empty last time but memory plays tricks. Started this last night. Probably takes longer by train to get to Chapel Sands from Manchester than plane to Madrid.

Screenshot of The audio book of The Laura Cumming , In Pursuit of Velázquez read by Siobhan Redmond

The Vanishing Man. The tale of a Victorian obsessive John Snare told in tandem with a biography of Velázquez. I hope I'm not too late to the party (published 2016) but this superlative reading by Siobhan Redmond of a superlative book by Laura Cumming is making my year. @lauracummingart.bsky.social

Audio Book cover of On Chapel Sands by Laura Cumming

Just returned from my first visit since '92 to the Prado to see the Velázquez, inspired by The Vanishing Man. Fairly sure the room was almost empty last time but memory plays tricks. Started this last night. Probably takes longer by train to get to Chapel Sands from Manchester than plane to Madrid.

Do you have a moment to talk about our Sweet Lord Satan?

Illustrations by Arnold Lobel for “The Mummy” and “The Spectre on the Moor” in Jack Prelutsky, “The Headless Horseman Rides Tonight: More Poems to Trouble Your Sleep” (NY: Greenwillow Books, 1980).

On this day 1971, boxer Muhammad Ali visited Tesco at Stretford’s Arndale shopping precinct to promote Ovaltine.

Damn this trumpeter busker. He keeps playing the same few bars over and over. The real musician must have died and left the instrument to him. I'm too footsore and my bag is too heavy to move further away from him.

Anthony Burgess article from 1989 on ten years of the Thatcher government.

anthonyburgessfoundation.substack.com/p/a-woman-wh...

(UK political journalists finish wiping the clay from their hands as they look up at the amphibian-faced, pint-brandishing golem in a Barbour jacket)
"The govt is failing to deal with this golem. Isn't that right, golem?"
(They lay offerings at its feet & stick a microphone under its nose).
"SPEAK"

#NewYorkerCartoons

2/2 Somebody refused to comb her hair this morning! And Jan Gossaert just went ahead and painted little Dorothea that way. ❤️

Feeling GHASTLY! 💀

Cover art of Haunt of Fear no. 14 by Graham Ingels, 1952

Cork fish kill: No culprit for the worst environmental disaster in Ireland this century A multi-agency investigation failed to find the source of, or even identify, the toxins that killed nearly 40,000 fish in the Blackwater River recently

Who’s responsible for probably the greatest environmental disaster this century in Ireland? Nobody! What caused it? Nothing! What are we going to learn from it…? Just take a guess…

www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/comm...

Presented by the War Artists Advisory Committee 1946

Totes Meer (Dead Sea) http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/nash-totes-meer-dead-sea-n05717

A photo realistic illustration of a woman in overalls, hoovering and deep cleaning the fabric seats of a railway carriage

The modern world in old Ladybird books.

"Carriages get very dirty inside from all the tobacco ash"

(On the Railways, 1972)
Artist: John Berry

The best way I can describe House of Guinness is that it's like an off-form Baz Luhrmann directing the first draft of a nightmare sequence in Downton Abbey where a lord is terrified of visiting Ireland.

Fish ‘n’ Chip Van, Otley Road, Bradford, photo by Ian Beesley. 'The chip shop owner told me he had to fire one of his assistants because he kept parking the van the wrong way round.'

In 1945, artist NC Wyeth was killed when hit by a train at a railway crossing. His stricken son Andrew’s tribute/farewell to him was this enigmatic ‘Winter 1946’, set over the hill from where the accident occurred, and showing himself as a young man running, erratically

Flyer for art exhibition in Omagh

The Shore Collective show, Confluence 2.10.25 to 25.10.25 Strule Arts Centre, Omagh. I have two pieces in it. Please pop along if you are anywhere near the vicinity.

#shorecollective
#art
#artexhibition
#omagh
#struleartscentre
#painting
#sculpture
#ceramics
#jewellry
#northernirishart
#irishart

Brendan having a laugh.

27 Sep 75 Tennis. Ugh!... Ringo out of his skull. Very unhappy man.

Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth. Acrylic paint on paper. A3

#painting
#art
#manchesterartist
#irishartist
#bear

Unsolicited writing advice, no. 881:
If you’d like to broaden your vocabulary, read. Read widely, and often. That way you’ll absorb new language organically and use it naturally…

We have to keep teaching the lessons. It’s more important today than ever.

My heroes

T. S. Eliot

Today is T. S. Eliot’s birthday. He was a poet, playwright, critic, & editor.

From ‘Preludes’:

“One thinks of all the hands
That are raising dingy shades
In a thousand furnished rooms.”