I’m very pleased to be included in the upcoming Imagined Landscapes exhibition at the Royal Cambrian Academy in Conwy this autumn. Curated by Clive Hick-Jenkins, the exhibition will include works by Clive, and also by Ian Whadcock, Kevin Paulsen, Garry Barker, Peter Lloyd, Abi Whitehouse Efnisein, Geoffrey Coupland, Orson Coupland, Desdemona McCannon, Jonny Hannah, Sharon Hannah, Barry Smith and Sarah Raphael-Balme. It’s a great pleasure to be showing work with such wonderful artists in such a lovely setting.
The details of the exhibition are as follows:
Imagined Landscapes
Saturday 21st October to Saturday 12th November
Royal Cambrian Academy
Crown Lane, Conwy, LL32 8AN
The brief is a treat; while I do love painting from nature and sketching from observation I’m even more excited by inner landscapes, the genius loci of the terrain seen in the mind’s eye. The two are often intermingled, of course, with places i’ve been to and got to know seeping into my subconscious and then reappearing, transformed into some other place, so that the landscapes I create are layered in different associations and memories, just as the landscape I see when I travel or get out of town is a palimpsest of different stories, laid down over millennia.
I’m making some new work for the show, with possibly one or two older pieces in there as well.
In the Gardens of Mr. & Mrs. Lyon, acrylic and collage, 31 x 76 cm, 2017
This collage stems from one of my current preoccupations, the story of Beauty and the Beast, reimagined as The Courtship of Mr Lyon by Angela Carter in her collection of short stories based on fairy tales, The Bloody Chamber. I’m making another piece of 3D work for the show of the Beast’s house as we first encounter it in the story, beautiful but sad and frozen, whereas this piece is set in a time after the end of the story, when the spell is broken, the Beast transforms and the ice melts. I’m sure I’m not the only one who is slightly disappointed when the Beast goes through his transformation at the end of the tale. By then i’ve fallen in love with him as the Beast, just as Belle has, and he’s always much more, well, ‘grrr’ than the rather insipid prince he usually turns into. Mind you there’s a nice moment in the recent Disney live action remake at the end when he turns into the Prince but has a beard. He says something like ‘I’ll shave it off tomorrow’ and Belle goes ‘ooh, no, I like it!’.
The collage has turned out rather more busy and whimsical than I’d set out to make but i’ll go with it; this is, after all, a picture about happy endings, when love conquers, winter turns to spring, everyone’s dancing and singing, cue the credits and swirling music….
I’ve made a lot of sketches, maquettes and photos as I explored this widescreen format and there is a lot of exploration from these sketches to do, it’ll keep me going for a while this train of thought…
Hedgecrows 
