Landscape leads the way
The Albany Gallery welcomes four artists who take inspiration from the landscape for their latest exhibition
CLAIRE Beattie, Anna Perlin, Jenny Wheatley NEAC and Gregg Anston-Race will be exhibiting their work at the Cardiff gallery from Thursday, September until Saturday, October 12.
Claire Beattie graduated from the University of Edinburgh and Edinburgh College of Art with an MA in Fine Art and has been a studio artist ever since.
Landscape, weather, colour and light are all starting points for her paintings which are almost always rooted in the solitary and central motif of a tree.
She says: “I live and work in the town of Duns surrounded by the endlessly beautiful Scottish Borders countryside.
“I work in oils on canvas and the paintings are developed over time by building thin layers of colour to create depth and intensity.
“The imagery and composition is simple and distilled and preoccupied by indistinct and spontaneous mark making which briefly comes into focus.
“I want the work to have a resonance, a sense of contemplation and calm, and to go some way to echo the beautiful and meditative spaces I encounter and that have inspired them.”
Anna Perlin has a selection of coastal paintings in the exhibition which are all inspired by a holiday to St David’s in Pembrokeshire last summer.
Anna, who reached the semi-finals of Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year 2016, and won Artists and Illustrators Artist of the Year 2017, uses a mix of media that incorporates paint, oil pastel, charcoal and collage.
She said: “Much of my work develops from something catching my eye when out walking – the shapes and colour combinations of branches and leaves, or hedges and fields. I love coming back to my studio to make my own window onto the peace and quiet of the countryside.
My aim is that you feel you could step into an Autumn morning or Spring day straight from the room you’re in.
“My textile background and mum’s love of quilt making led me to use material as part of the collage in my work which creates wonderful strong textural and colour effects as it soaks up and reflects light in a unique way.
“The quiet areas of my paintings are just as important though, pulling your focus onto the subject that originally captivated me.”
The smaller paintings showing in this current collection of Jenny Wheatley’s work are an immediate reaction to the world and her travels around it.
The larger studio pieces try to capture the essence of place and a personal reflection on those travels.
They are concerned as much with the journey as the arrival.
Jenny trained at West Surrey College of Art and design and was one of the youngest ever people at the time to be elected to both the New English Art Club in 1983 and the Royal Watercolour Society in 1984.
More recently she was an art expert judge on two series of Channel 4’s popular Watercolour Challenge series and her work resides in many public and private collections throughout the world, including
those of HM the Queen, the National Collection of Malta and the National collection in China in Qindao.
There will also be work exhibited by Gregg Anston-Race. Gregg is a self-taught Cornish glass artist, who has been creating glass in his studio for over 14 years.
His work is very much influenced by the colours and forms of the landscape around him and especially that found in the rock and mineral formations.
Many of the techniques Gregg uses are unique to his work.
He colours clear glass with powdered coloured glass (Frit) and is keen that the work should look organic.
This is reflected in some of his most recent pieces where, after much experimentation, he found a way of creating a look of flowing colours on the glass.
Gregg will be exhibiting work ranging from his large glass vessels and bowls for which he is especially well known, down to smaller and more practical glass bowls.
■ The exhibition runs from Thursday, September 19 to Saturday, October 12.