- Venue
- The Crypt, St Marylebone Parish Church
- Starts
- Saturday, July 1, 2017
- Ends
- Thursday, September 28, 2017
- Address
- 17 Marylebone Road London NW1 5LT
- Location
- London
- Organiser
- The Crypt, St Marylebone Parish Church
Drawing into Landscape
Artists: Amanda Ansell, Emily Ball, Simon Carter, Keith Murdoch. Curated by Marco Calí
Dates: Saturday 30th June 2017 to Thursday 28th September 2017 Mon-Fri 9am-5pm, Sat 9am-4pm* | Private View: Tuesday 4th July, 6-8pm | Panel Discussion: Friday 25th August, 3-5pm
Location: The Crypt, St Marylebone Church, London, NW1 5LT. (Near Baker Street tube station and Madame Tussauds).
Over the last few years, Contemporary British Painting has staged a program of exhibitions in the crypt of St Marylebone Church.
Most of us live in cities and only ever experience landscape in a fleeting and somewhat fragmentary way. It no longer makes up the everyday background to our daily lives. Yet, deep down we are still drawn back to it. Landscape, the colour, the light, the substance of the air even, is something that for us is deeply symbolic and full of spiritual weight.
The current show brings together four artists who take landscape as their subject and who share an element of working outdoors in their otherwise studio-based practice. They all have continuous, persistent, repeated encounters with a very specific aspect of the outdoors, that result in complex emotive paintings. Normally only the final paintings are put on display, so that the thought process behind each one is not available to us. This exhibition allows us to look at their individual working methods.
Along with finished paintings are drawings, sketches and notes that lead to the completed work. These are the warts-and-all of each painter’s work. We can glimpse over their shoulder as they go on their walks or take a moment to contemplate the same view. Then, paradoxically, we can follow them back indoors away from that place, where they endeavour to create something of that experience. They only have photos perhaps and these bits of paper with their scribbles and smudges as visual references. Their practice is one of finding painterly equivalents to that moment at that time in that place.
This method of working is perhaps as old as painting itself. What is surprising is how these very internal monologues that each has between themselves and the landscape in question, should result in works that have such universal resonance. This exhibition gives us the opportunity to see the alchemy that they practice, creating works that somehow convey this unique and personal experience.
Biographies
Amanda Ansell’s paintings are about a sense of place and explore the floating subject, watery places and the relationship between painter and nature. Amanda Ansell was born in Suffolk and studied at the Norwich School of Art and Design and The Slade School of Fine Art. She has completed an artist residency at Firstsite, Colchester and exhibits widely, including at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, and has work in both public and private collections. Amanda Ansell currently lives and works on the Suffolk / Essex border.
Emily Ball was born in Colchester Essex and attended Exeter College of Art (BA in Fine Art Painting) and The Surrey Institute of Art & Design (MA in painting). She has completed numerous residencies (including Seawhite of Brighton; suppliers of art materials), public commissions and exhibitions in the South East (prize winner at the Chichester Contemporary Open). Alongside her painting she teaches Contemporary Painting and Drawing in West Sussex and is the author of Drawing and Painting People – A Fresh Approach.
Simon Carter studied in Colchester and London and lives and works on the north-east Essex coast. His work is in numerous collections (Madison Museum of Fine Arts, USA; Jangsu Museum of Fine Art, China), has exhibited widely and won a number of prizes (Royal Watercolour Society, Arts Council England). In recent years, Simon has also curated shows, including the successful 2015 show Contemporary British Watercolours.
Keith Murdoch now lives and works in Northumberland but was born in Liverpool in 1972. He studied Foundation Diploma in Art & Design at City College, Liverpool 1991-92, BA Fine Art at University of Central Lancashire 1992-95 and MA Multimedia Art at Liverpool JMU in 2002-03. Keith has exhibited internationally and has work in numerous private collections around the world.
* Occasionally the Crypt closes for private meetings, you can phone ahead to check the times on 020 7935 7315 or 07809 330592
Gallery address: The Crypt, St Marylebone Parish Church, 17 Marylebone Road, London, NW1 5LT
For sales and enquiries contact Marco Calí, [email protected] Press Release written by Marco Calí.
With thanks to: Contemporary British Painting | St Marylebone Parish Church | Noah Carter (flyer and catalogue design) Simon Carter (catalogue editor) | Catalogue information available from contemporarybritishpainting.com
