Western Morning News (Saturday)
Sculptures and paintings are balanced and starkly beautiful
Frank Ruhrmund looks at the new Winter Collection at Cornwall Contemporary, Penzance
Despite the many problems raised by the pandemic, Sarah Brittain-Mansbridge, director of Cornwall Contemporary, Penzance, has managed to get her Winter Collection off to a flying start by not only selling three paintings by Felicity Keefe but also by sending them abroad, one to New York state and two to Singapore.
An artist whose career in art began at South Devon College and was then followed by her gaining a BA (Hons) degree at the University of Brighton, among other things Felicity Keefe has since been a visiting lecturer at the City of Bath College, and has exhibited at all of London’s major art fairs as well as abroad from Paris to Stockholm. It has been said that her atmospheric and haunting landscapes can be likened to contemporary reminders of 19th century Romantic landscapes.
One who confesses to being inspired by states of flux, the change from day into night, summer into winter, and outward into inward, talking about her river paintings, she says: “They are environmental and have a metaphorical meaning for me, and operate on both levels. They physically depict the essence of the river as it is affected by changes in the seasons and time, and also describe an inner state of movement, flow and division. My work is soft and dreamy, painted in thin layers that almost fade in the quality of surface. I aim to capture the shadows and light that race across it; the moment at dusk or dawn when there is a gentle stillness and the sky is reflected in the water, the veils of mists and distant flames that come and go with the passing of time.”
The blend of traditional landscape, literature and personal mythology which forms an inner narration with all that she does, distinctive for their sense of atmosphere, although often brooding, Felicity Keefe’s paintings are balanced and starkly beautiful.
So, too, are the sculptures of Antonio Lopez Reche. Born in Barcelona, he studied at the university there, served on its staff as a post graduate teaching assistant for a time, and then in 1994 received an Erasmus grant from the European Commission to study at St Martin’s School of Art & Design in London. For a quarter of a century or so since then he has worked in this country and gained a considerable reputation for his creations that spring from and relate to universal themes such as internal conflict, strength, and man’s search for knowledge. Renowned for such commissions as the bronze Woman and Fish for the Tower Hamlets Art Department to the bronze Jaume 111, for the Mallorcan Government, he has exhibited extensively in this country and further afield from Vienna to New York.
His figurative work is inspired by the Western tradition often relates to Mediterranean mythology and folk tales in which, as he says: “My interest is in expressive tools marks and spontaneous modelling with materials such as clay, wax or plaster that translate into bronze in an attempt to capture their immediacy and rawness. I also have a deep interest in a more conceptual line of work, in which still using mostly bronze casting, the repeated reproduction of an object sometimes created by me, sometimes snatched from our immediate daily life, creates a new form.
“Although these pieces start with my fascination with the chosen subject, the repetition of these elements creates a new dimension far from the original object.”
Whether near or far, large or small, Antonio Lopez Reche’s sculptures are in a class of their own, and as absolute as they are admirable.
Filling all three floors of the gallery, and accompanied by an entertaining and enterprising assortment of works from the many talented artists who exhibit regularly here, this is a Winter Collection not to be missed. Admission is free, and it can be seen in Cornwall Contemporary, 1 Parade Street, Penzance. 10am-4pm Tuesday-Saturday, until January 21, 2021.