RADIANCE: painters of light
Luke Elwes Alex Lowery Boo Mallinson
Alfred Stockham ARCA RWA
Furniture by Petter Southall
Saturday 13 September to Sunday 12 October 2014
All artists paint light, but some make it shine out of their work so that it lights up the person looking at it, or at least that is how it feels. Luke Elwes and Alex Lowery have often shown together over the years, their very different work linked by the transformative effect of light in their paintings.
Luke Elwes paints water, the surface reflections, shadows and the colours underneath. His recent works on paper are made by allowing the water to run across his work lifting and dissolving the colours and marks in flowing patterns across his paintings.
Alex Lowery’s paintings of the Dorset coast take the planes of light, dark and shadow often of simple not classically beautiful buildings, such as 1950’s houses, sheds or skips, and shines brilliant coastal light on them, bringing them into unexpected subtle colour combinations and almost abstract compositions.
Boo Mallinson paints the feeling she has after walking the cliffs and hills, blown with the wind and bright with shafts of light. So much do atmospheric effects occupy her that the land and sea are implied rather than represented with a light touch, a keen sense of colour and a delight in the paint itself.
Alfred Stockham has spent a lifetime exploring how one colour and form affects another. He combines them with the touch of a master, carefully producing his small potent paintings. Shining golds and shimmering reds are perfectly contrasted with soft edged dark forms often of boats slipping quietly in or harbour walls. These poetic paintings offer a lifetime of contemplation.
To view all the pictures in the exhibition please follow the links to the artists’ pages highlighted in colour above.
Luke Elwes was born in 1961 in London where he now lives and works. His early years were spent in Iran where the light and space of the desert were a formative influence. He studied at Camberwell School of Art and Bristol University between 1979 and 1985, and completed his postgraduate studies in Art History at Birkbeck College, London in 2007. While working at Christies he began to travel and write, discovering and revisiting remote locations in India, Asia Minor and North Africa. In 2011 he gave an ‘Artist’s Eye’ talk at the National Gallery and in 2013 was awarded a grant to study at the Vermont Studio Center. He shows in London with the Adam Gallery.
Born 1957 in London, Alex Lowery studied at Bath Academy, Sir John Cass School of Art and the Central School of Art, graduating in 1982. He has painted and shown regularly in Dorset and London since 1994. He shows in London with Art First. He lives and works in Charmouth with the artists Vanessa Gardiner and their daughter Jessie. Alex Lowery has had three solo shows at Sladers Yard where he has a strong following of those who relish his restrained yet dazzling paintings of this exceptional coastline.
Boo Mallinson studied Fine Art at the Byam Shaw School of Art and City & Guilds School of Art in London. She moved to Dorset twelve years ago, moving to Bridport in 2014. She has shown widely in Dorset, Cornwall, Bath, Bristol, Cheltenham, Sheffield and London. Her work is in private collections all over the world.
Alfred Stockham has had a distinguished career. Born in London, he loved painting from his earliest years but he followed the family tradition and spent seven years in the Royal Navy before studying at Camberwell School of Art and the Royal College of Art where he was awarded a Silver Medal. He was a Rome Scholar and Grenada Arts Fellow at the University of York before he arrived in Bristol in 1968 to take up a post as lecturer at Bristol Polytechnic (now the University of the West of England) where he became Head of Fine Art. He left to devote himself to painting full-time. Alfred was elected a full member of the Royal West of England Academy in 1993 and was appointed Honorary Curator of the permanent collection of the RWA in 2001. Still painting, his life is constrained now by illness, although he is as witty and perspicacious as ever. His work is in public collections throughout Britain and Ireland.
Petter Southall has been making his distinctive furniture in his studio outside Bridport since 1991. Sladers Yard is his showroom which he has sensitively converted into an art gallery and cafe. He learned traditional boatbuilding in Norway before turning to furniture design and cabinet making which he studied with James Krenov in California and with John Makepeace. His first commission was a dining room for the sculptor Elisabeth Frink and he has gone from there making work for artists, academics and financiers, public spaces and private houses, always with flair and originality.
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