Western Morning News (Saturday)
A taste of spring full of hope, joy and inspiration
FRANK RUHRMUND sees South West Academy’s Spring Exhibition at the Brownston Gallery and finds it full of sunshine and warmth
One of the most welcome art events in our region has to be the South West Academy’s Spring Exhibition, now being held in the Brownston Gallery, Modbury. Devon. An establishment which actually came into being 22 years ago, this is the seventh successive year, as gallery director Catherine Gillen points out, that it has been held here. As she says, “Those seven years include two lockdowns that make this quite an achievement. This year’s collection has been inspired by the hope of spring, and with several landscapes filled with hints of approaching sunshine and warmth, it has something we all need right now.” As it happens, as Phil Creek, current Chair of the South West Academy of Fine & Applied Arts, tells us, “After 22 years we are excited to announce that the Academy now has its first permanent home and exhibition space at Kennaway House, Sidmouth, East Devon. This will allow us to hold exhibitions, talks, and workshops, and to further our aim to promote the Arts throughout the South West. We invite you all to visit our new gallery which we hope will be in operation by the end of March.”
Back at the Brownston Gallery, there’s an abundance of top quality art works to be seen and enjoyed, to name but a few, by such as Jo Dixon, Adrian Parnell, John Hurford, Judith Cummings and Ken Cosgrove. Then, too, there is Alan Cotton, whose art career began early when he was encouraged to draw and paint by his mother, who made paint brushes for him from her own hair tied on to a stick, aptly enough, with cotton. His formal art training was to start at Redditch and Bournemouth Schools of Art, followed by periods at Birmingham College of Art and at the University of Birmingham, during which years he consolidated his love of the countryside and the landscape.
One who has enjoyed an incredibly successful career, he is quick to acknowledge the important part played in his life by Messum’s Fine Art in London. It was David Messum who gave him his first solo show in 1985 which was a sell-out, and he hasn’t looked back since. For a long while in his early years he was a familiar figure on the art scene in West Cornwall; he painted in Newlyn and St Ives and numbered such friends as fellow artists Terry Frost, Denis Mitchell and John Wells. I first had the privilege of meeting him and David Messum when involved in the making of the BBC-TV film about the Newlyn School of Artists, An Artist On Every Corner.
He completed his art studies at the University of Exeter where he gained his MA, and when he settled in Devon I know I felt that Devon’s gain was Cornwall’s loss. As well as exhibiting regularly, he has achieved so much it is impossible to mention all he has done, but few artists can claim to have been honoured as he was in 2005, when invited to accompany HRH The Prince of Wales to Sri Lanka, Australia, New Zealand and Fiji as his tour artist. An artist with a huge appetite for nature, his Transylvania – Miklosvar Gardens in Evening Light is exceptional.
A word, too, for Welsh-born artist Adrian Edwards, who lives and works in North Cornwall. A member of the Plymouth Society of Artists and winner of the Brownston Gallery award, his landscape Wandering Back is as satisfying as it is striking. Well worth a detour, the South West Academy’s Spring Exhition can be seen at Brownston Gallery, 36 Church Street, in Modbury, Devon, until April 16.