The Life that Springs
Aquatint, carborundum, deep etching, linocut and woodcut prints by
Anita Klein RE
Fred Cuming RA
Martyn Brewster ARE
Merlyn Chesterman RE
Sally McLaren RE
ceramics by Yo Thom
25 March – 13 May 2023
This is an exhibition about joie de vivre. We invite you to lift your heart with an exhibition of joyous colourful works of art made by some of the most brilliant printmakers working today. Everyday life, the land, sea, plants and trees are celebrated in different styles and techniques by five print-makers and in Yo Thom’s tactile irresistible ceramics and Petter Southall’s lyrical furniture.
If you would like an invitation to the opening on 25 March, please let us know on gallery@sladersyard.co.uk. Please follow the links above to view each artist’s work. They will appear there as soon as they are available to view and buy.
ANITA KLEIN’s prints express the deepest pleasures of everyone’es every day, the fleeting moments that make life worth living. The joy of holding a toddler in the swimming pool, of lying on a branch in dappled shade, simple and deeply felt pleasures are expressed in a straight-forward easy style that rings absolutely true. Her work is masterful, moving and brimming with joie de vivre.
Anita Klein studied at Chelsea and the Slade schools of art. She is a fellow and past president of the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers (RE) and her work is in many private and public collections in Europe, the USA and Australia, including Arts Council England, the V&A, the British Library and the British Museum. She divides her time between studios in London and Anghiari, Italy. We are delighted to show her prints here for the first time.
FRED CUMING RA (1930-2022) devoted his life to expressing fleeting impressions of the world around him. He captured the moods and atmospheres generated by landscape, still life or interiors. He often painted the coast of the south of England around Rye where he lived for many years and also the Dorset coast which he visited on multiple occasions often staying in Symondsbury near Bridport. He showed his paintings several times at Sladers Yard since 2012 and we are delighted now to show three of his beautiful limited-edition silkscreen prints.
Fred Cuming was born in 1930 in London and trained at the Sidcup School of Art between 1945 and 1949. After National Service he studied at the Royal College of Art for four years and was awarded the Abbey Travel Scholarship to visit Rome. In 1969 he was elected an Associate Member of the Royal Academy, becoming a full member in 1974. At that time, he was the youngest member ever elected. Fred has been a member of the New English Art Club since 1960. His book, the lavishly illustrated 190 page Another Figure in the Landscape, edited by Christian Tyler, had an introduction by Richard Holmes OBE.
MARTYN BREWSTER ARE has been a serious and productive print maker for many years, developing his own silkscreen techniques and making relief prints and etchings in his own print studio as well as teaching printmaking at Bournemouth College of Art. Recently he has been working with master-printer Andrew Smith to make thrilling multi-plate carborundum prints on the unique press Andrew had built in order to make Howard Hodgkin’s prints. Martyn has recently been elected to the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers (ARE).
Martyn Brewster was born in Oxford in 1952. He studied Art and Design in Hertfordshire and Fine Art (Painting) in Brighton followed by a Postgraduate diploma in Printmaking. He has been working as a professional artist ever since with regular solo shows in museums and galleries in London and throughout the UK as well as exhibitions in USA, Canada and throughout Europe. He has won numerous awards and his work is in private, public and corporate collections worldwide including the Victoria & Albert Museum and the British Museum. Recently his work has entered the collections of Pallant House, Chichester, and the Hepworth Wakefield. Martyn is represented by the Portland Gallery and Waterhouse & Dodd in London and the US. We are also delighted to represent him. He has shown his paintings, drawings and prints regularly at Sladers Yard since 2017.
MERLYN CHESTERMAN RE is a woodblock printmaker living on the north Devon coast. Her work explores the natural world around her, in particular the sea, waves crashing on rocks, the weather, windblown trees and grasses. She incorporates the texture of her woodblocks in a process that seems as natural as her subject matter, producing prints that are filled with the patterns, rhythms and soft colours of nature.
Merlyn Chesterman was born in England, and grew up in Hong Kong, returning to England to study Fine Art at Bath Academy of Art, Corsham, where she obtained a BA, and at Bath University a Dip Ed. She furthered her studies in China, at Guanlan Print Base, Shanghai, and at the Purple Bamboo Studio, Hangzhou. Merlyn is a Senior Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers and has written two books about woodblock printmaking with her colleague Rod Nelson ARE. Making Woodblock Prints is published by Crowood Press and is available at the exhibition. Twenty Concepts in Woodblock Printing from the same publisher is due out in May 2023. She has exhibited widely throughout the world and her work is in many collections in Hong Kong and Bhutan as well as the V&A Museum, the Ashmolean Museum and the Edward James Foundation at West Dean College, Chichester, where she taught on the Short Course Programme for twenty years.
SALLY McLAREN RE is a leading British print maker whose work is celebratory, exploratory, light in touch and brilliant in colour. The title of this show comes from Sally’s words. She is preoccupied by ‘The life that springs in landscape, the spirit of it, the growth and organisms of centuries, the effects of wind, rain, sun and the marks left by man from past to present.’
These glorious expressions are created in collaboration with the master-printmaker Andrew Smith (who also works with Martyn Brewster and David Inshaw) using an ambitious combination of drypoint, aquatint, etching and carborundum plates on a unique press that Andrew Smith had built in order to make Howard Hodgkin’s prints. The results are technically and artistically outstanding works.
Sally McLaren was born in London, studied at the Ruskin School of Art in Oxford and at the Central School of Art in London. After further study in Paris at the Atelier of Stanley William Hayter, she returned to England to teach at Goldsmith’s College of Art. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers, the Printmaker’s Council of Great Britain and the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers. She has exhibited widely and her work is held in numerous collections around the world, including the New York Public Library, the Scottish Arts Council, the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, the Museum of Modern Art in Macedonia and the Cabo Frio Print Collection in Sao Paulo. In recent years, two monographs of her work have been published, The response of Landscape and In Search of Stillness. Sally McLaren lives and works in Wiltshire.
YO THOM was born in Tokyo. She came to England in 1996 to study 3D design at the Kent Institute of Art and Design. After her introductory year, she chose ceramics and completed an MA in Ceramics in 2000. Whilst studying at the college, she also worked for Lisa Hammond MBE at Maze Hill Pottery in London and continued her apprenticeship for a further two years after graduation.
Yo Thom set up her own first studio in Deptford, London in 2004 producing stoneware and porcelain tableware and some wood-fired pieces. She moved to Shaftesbury, Dorset, in 2009 and has since had a family. She is an elected member of the Craft Potters Association and has exhibited widely throughout the UK. Her work draws on both Japanese and British pottery traditions and practices.
Her current work is inspired by her beautiful rural surroundings in combination with Japanese folk textiles called ‘Boro’. Yo Thom makes her work in stoneware which may be thrown, slabbed, coiled and pinched. Her distinctive finishes are created using sgraffito techniques on an indigo slip partially covered with white glaze. Her pieces are functional and made to enhance food culture.
PETTER SOUTHALL’s functional furniture is designed to be used and enjoyed through the texture of surfaces treated with natural finishes, the comfort and pleasure of his strong sympathetic designs and the joy of looking at its beautiful lines. He too is inspired by the Dorset landscape in combination with the Norwegian tradition of wooden boat building that traces back to the Viking ships. He uses boatbuilding techniques, in particular steam bending solid hardwoods, in combination with cabinet making and his own elegant innovative ideas to make pieces of lyrical beauty and tensile strength.
Petter Southall trained as a traditional wooden boatbuilder in Norway, at college, in apprenticeships and in a museum-based special legacy apprenticeship. He ran his own boatyard in Norway and worked in commercial boatyards in Maine. He studied cabinet making at the College of the Redwoods in Northern California followed by sustainable design with John Makepeace at Hooke Park College in Dorset. He set up his workshop in Dorset in 1991 and has recently moved to new premises at Denhay, north of Bridport. His showroom is Sladers Yard Gallery. He has made furniture for public art commissions, corporations and countless private homes and offices in UK, Europe and the US.
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