Our Summer Exhibition at Snape has evolved over recent weeks and is now more or less complete – though of course individual paintings can come and go. This year the theme is ‘Light’ so we have selected works which are characterised by both lightness of touch and of colour, and/or seem to give off light, mainly by using white.
Most of the works are glazed so the images here of the hung exhibition are generally of a poor quality, with reflections in them and/or they are taken at an oblique angle to try to avoid reflections. So the aim here is simply to give an overall impression of the exhibition rather than highlight all the works individually. Over the next week I’ll try to take down some individual paintings and photograph them properly.
Starting clockwise from left of the kitchen door is (upper) my small inkwash painting (17/14) on paper of a field-hut (cattle shed) seen through an open gateway on the island of Inish Meain, Galway Bay. Below it is a dramatic print by Michael Carlo called ‘Storm Field 9.’ The subject – a hill with fields on its side and topped by a clump of trees – is a familiar one in the Carlo oeuvre:
To the right of the door is (upper) a small recent ink on paper impression (20/19) called ‘The Carnser’, a local name for a path along the edge of the marsh; with (below) ‘At the Lookout 3’ by John Crossley 2014:
Then comes the first of two pencil sketches by Harry Becker; this one is ‘Shearing’ in Kent from a notebook of 1898 (see below for larger image):
By the window is ‘Coconut fragments’, a recent (12/19) PJF collage on paper
On the right of the window is one of Michael Horn’s favourite subjects, ‘On Weaver’s Way’, here in mixed media; with Birkin Haward’s ‘Entering Wroclaw 5’, 2017, round the corner as the first of seven works along the long wall.
Next to it, on its right, is my ‘Wallpaper’ collage (47/18) followed by my small oil on khadi paper of a ‘Geometrical abstract’:
Then comes perhaps the star of the show in its way, a recently acquired carborundum print by Ross Loveday called ‘loose threads.’
To its right is an untitled print by Tessa Newcombe.
Here is a better image of ‘loose threads.’
Then comes my ‘Visit to Happisburgh’, 2017, inkwash on paper, followed by the second Harry Becker pencil drawing of sheep in Kent 1898 (see Ipswich Catalogue 1993, p. 41; shown here, upper, the ‘Shearing’ sketch from the same notebook, illustrated earlier in the exhibition above).
The run of works on the long wall is closed by Linda Thomas’ ‘Barns, Boyton 2’ acrylic on paper.
Then, to the right of the window, comes ‘Ovine hoof-marks’, a small part of the flooring material I showed in an earlier blog being walked over by sheep last month. The mud and soil marks are in a sense random but the image is not, for it is a carefully selected extract with a pattern or visible composition.
To the right of the door is one of my favourites of a few years ago, ‘Dissolving coastline’, much rubbed oils on canvas board. In one way an abstract linear composition, this is actually based on an imagined impression from above of an East Anglian/Lincolnshire coastline where sea and land merge rather than meet along neat lines.
And, to finish in the main room, just around the corner are two similar small watercolours by different artists. One (upper) is by L.Self and called ‘Pastures at Southwold’; the other is untitled and by an unknown painter.
Here are better photographs of these two:
Beyond them are two oddities: one is a modest water colour of Adam and Eve at Avebury which was one of my earliest, and cheapest, art purchases (£8):
The second is a hot-off-the-ground ovine hoof ‘painting’, the first that I effected when I trialled the method on the sheep as they shot out of the trough-gangway with hooves wet and sanitised. The pale blue is from the liquid used for this foot-bathing. One reader has already identified this as ‘the star of the show’; but can I claim to be its artist? Is it indeed art?
And finally, just outside the main room in the entrance lobby are two paintings: one is my ‘Landscape on a windy day’, an inkwash on paper work created immediately before the ‘Happisburgh’ painting above in 2017. I begin this post with a better image of this painting.
Also in the lobby is this unfinished small inkwash on cardboard called ‘The Hard’ (19/19), hung now primarily to see what it looks like. It looks less than impressive but I know what to do with it now
So that is the exhibition overall, with just one or two still to be added but the running order will probably not change. What fun it is to play at being a gallerist!