Rowley Gallery Blog
From Saturnia it’s a short drive to Sovana, a small village with just a single street, beautifully paved in herringbone brickwork. There’s a ruined castle at one end and a cathedral at the other, and a piazza in the middle where we ate delicious lemon pizza for lunch. Continue reading “Sovana & Pitigliano”
Heading south on the road from Siena to Grosseto last year, Sue snapped this photograph from our car as we sat in traffic, waiting to join the cypress avenue queuing in line above us on the horizon. The trees were lying in wait, ready to ambush us at the next junction. A crest of spikes. But with a gentle zigzagging we joined together like the interlocking teeth of a zip fastener and cruised in harmony down to the ancient site of Roselle. Continue reading “Roselle & Saturnia”
Our newest window display features nine paintings by Emily Phillips, nine playful abstractions, explorations of line and colour and shape, improvised doodles in search of a melody. Emily trained as a painter of trompe l’oeil illusions but now she’s learning to relax and teaching her paintbrush to sing. Painting as playing as musical invention. Continue reading “Nine From Emily Phillips”
The Turner Contemporary at Margate, a light box of etched glass walls lined like graph paper, its warp and weft woven with Entangled: Threads & Making, the best exhibition I’ve seen in a long while.
…sculpture, installation, tapestry, textiles, and jewellery from the mid-20th century to the present day. It features over 40 international female artists who expand the possibilities of knitting and embroidery, weaving, sewing and wood carving, often incorporating unexpected materials such as plants, clothing, hair and bird quills. Continue reading “Entangled: Threads & Making”
Puzzlewood is the title of this gorgeous new painting by Jelly Green, one of a series of 35 paintings and drawings of woodlands around the UK that she has been working on over the last 12 months. They will be exhibited as part of the Alde Valley Spring Festival 2017, whose theme this year is Quercus & Co, a celebration of the English oak, woodland & local wildlife. It promises to be a wonderful show. It opens on 22nd April and runs until 21st May. More details here.
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Jelly Green / The Rowley Gallery.
David Wiseman brought us some new work, more tales of the riverbank, rich with the tangled delights of branches and lights, the sparkle-dance of leaves and water, ripples and shadows like liquid music. Look out for David’s paintings in the forthcoming Arborealists exhibition at the Nature in Art Gallery, Twigworth, Gloucestershire and then later in the year at Poitiers in France. Continue reading “Six From David Wiseman”
More beauties were delivered to the gallery recently (not by bus), paintings by Andrew Walton, mostly done on site at his beloved Otmoor, an area of wild wetlands north-east of Oxford – A place with a rich history. Riots caused by enclosures, inspiration for writers, Lewis Carroll & John Buchan. A bombing range from WW2 and still an MOD rifle range. RSPB reserve, site of many murmurations. Continue reading “Six From Andrew Walton”
A box of paintings, newly arrived from Robert Newton, full of the smell of fresh oil paint even before the bubblewrap came off. A box of delights, each one thickly painted with quick strokes that capture the fleeting presence of the Northumberland landscape, seen in passing either by train, car or bicycle. They are tablets of immanent light held fast in Robert’s own handmade frames. Continue reading “Six From Robert Newton”
Wilmington Hill from Beachy Head
When I began painting as a teenager growing up in Sussex I painted things that were accessible. These were what was outside my bedroom window and objects I had lying around my room. The view outside my window was the South Downs and the changing light, weather and seasons made it continually fascinating and enduring as a subject matter. I began going out into the landscape and painting plein-air and when indoors I ran out of objects to paint I began collecting pots and coloured fabrics. These two ways of working have endured and developed simultaneously and I have continued to work from both landscape and still life in equal measure. Continue reading “Stillness: Paintings & Drawings From Life”
I was reading Up The Forest! one of the many contributions to Arboreal, a book I got late last year. It’s a wonderful compendium of woodland writings, a bumper book of tree stories. In this particular story Sue Clifford recalls her Nottingham childhood, Nottingham Forest FC, the coal mines interwoven with houses, fields and woodland, Robin Hood, Sherwood Forest. Continue reading “The Leaves Of Southwell”