25 May–19 June 2019
A selection of still life paintings with new sculpture & ceramics featuring work by Reg Cartwright, Tony Scrivener, Ray Sheldon, Annie Williams, & Vivienne Williams with Jack Eagan & John Pollex.
A selection of still life paintings with new sculpture & ceramics featuring work by Reg Cartwright, Tony Scrivener, Ray Sheldon, Annie Williams, & Vivienne Williams with Jack Eagan & John Pollex.
Reg Cartwright was born in Leicester in 1938 and has been a full-time painter and illustrator since 1974. His paintings offer simplicity within a complex structure of semi-abstraction, tone and colour. The careful placing of everyday objects within this overall plan, stripped of all superfluities, creates a powerful and harmonious design.
Tony Scrivener was born in London in 1944 and has painted professionally since 1992. His distinctive paintings comprise principally landscapes and still life. Drawing and line play a key role in the development of his paintings, delineating and separating space of both object and composition.
After leaving school at the age of 15, Ray Sheldon worked in the ceramic industry, becoming Art Director of Minton. Ray's work explores the dynamics of still life; somewhere between the figurative and abstraction. A modernist at heart, he strives for simplification by reducing a composition to its essential characteristics.
Annie Williams' recent work has been almost entirely still-life. She enjoys playing with shapes, pattern and colour, and mixing the familiar with some abstraction. Her foregrounds are a few simple objects, usually pots. Backgrounds are created from textiles or old newspaper cuttings, and even some unfinished paintings as a starting point.
Vivienne Williams has been a full time painter since 1990. As she builds layers of paint, the surface texture is energetically worked, scratched, sanded and stained. 'Deciding what to leave in and what to leave out is a balancing act. The spaces are as significant as the objects themselves.'
Jack Eagan is a sculptor working from his studio in the North East of the UK. Often looking to the natural world for inspiration, Jack makes things to enjoy and spend time with, to contemplate their origin, and admire their beauty. 'I want each and every object I make to reflect a balance between being naturally formed and an object that has been formed by hand or by machine.'
John Pollex makes highly coloured earthenware pots with expressive abstract markings. Using brushes and spatulas, intensely coloured earthenware slips are freely applied in a painterly abstract manner onto highly individual thrown and altered pots. He sees his work in the area of three dimensional painting, whereby clay substitutes canvas.
