27th July 2020

NEWSLETTER 7- David Tress: Artists’ Travels 

No doubt artists have always travelled. Renaissance artists travelled from city state to city state in fifteenth and sixteenth century Italy to find work and look for more generous patrons. Dutch and Flemish painters also travelled to Italy to add polish to their art, and the landscapes observed on their journeys made a great impression on them.

Jan Both from Utrecht travelled to Rome in the 1630s, and even after returning home to the flat landscape of the Netherlands he continued to paint landscapes with mountainous backgrounds bathed in a golden southern light. Jan Siberechts was one of many Dutch artists who came to Britain in the seventeenth century and brought with them the skills that provided the foundation for the flourishing of later generations of British artists. Siberechts was employed by aristocratic patrons to paint their country houses and estates, and these – often ‘bird’s eye’ views – are finely painted, but one painting of his stands out as quite exceptional. His ‘Landscape with Rainbow, Henley on Thames’ of about 1690 is a ravishing view of storm clouds and sun casting patterns of light and shadow over a river landscape with a double rainbow in the distance. It has such sensitivity to the power and pathos of light and shadow moving over the land that it could almost have been painted a century later in the Romantic period.

Both Dutch and Italian artists were powerful influences on the development of a British landscape school, and in the 1760s and 70s Richard Wilson used his knowledge gained from time spent in Italy to paint pictures of his British patrons’ country houses, transmuting their English country parks into Italianate settings.

It was in this period in the second half of the eighteenth century that humble watercolourists were employed by aristocratic patrons to accompany them on their travels – after all, without cameras what else could you do but bring an artist with you to record your holiday snaps! Such topographical artists might be taken to Italy on the Grand Tour, but later in the century when wars with France restricted continental travel the focus moved to trips within Britain. Thomas Pennant was accompanied by the artist Moses Griffith on his tours of Wales in the later 1770s, and the accomplished watercolourist John ‘Warwick’ Smith acquired his middle name after he accompanied the Earl of Warwick to Italy in the 1770s and 80s. Later artists gained more independence on their travels, the most indefatigable of them being J M W Turner who must have put up with many hardships to fill his sketch books with studies from England, Wales and Scotland. He managed to reach Inverness – no small feat on horseback and occasional coach – and even found his way to Loch Coruisk in the south of Skye.

For ten years from 2001 I worked on a project to follow the routes that these eighteenth century artists took in northern Britain. Having spent time researching their journeys I set out to follow their itineraries, travelling to different parts of northern England and Wales and to Scotland in a number of trips of ten days or so at a time. I took with me the same basic tool kit as the earlier artists – watercolours, ink and a sketchbook. These are admirably suited to the job being portable but still capable of great expression in capturing the details and also the atmosphere of the various landscapes encountered. I learnt many things in making these tours, and they answered numerous questions. Why, for example, did so many artists draw Dolbadarn Castle in North Wales? Well, it is an impressive isolated castle in wild surroundings which tuned in with the tastes of the time, but when I started mapping the eighteenth century artists’ routes it became obvious that there were – indeed still are – only two or three larger roads through Snowdonia, and any artists who chose to explore that area would have been almost certain to take a route that passed Dolbadarn. Some sites such as those around Ullswater in the Lake District had hardly changed in the 250 years since those earlier topographers had drawn them. In other areas the landscapes and buildings had been surrounded by high-rise buildings and busy urban life. When I made my own paintings for the project I relished the visual changes that I found as well as those places that had retained the stillness and emptiness of earlier centuries.

Today I still regularly travel to different parts of Britain and Ireland taking my sketch book with me. Recently I’ve been to Bodmin Moor, The Penwith Peninsula, Durham and North Yorkshire, Wiltshire and Exmoor. I’m always fascinated by the topography of what I find on these travels – the details, the shapes, the textures of what I see, but I also make paintings which explore the more visceral qualities of these landscapes – the feeling of light and space, the movement of sun and shadow and of rain squalls across the face of the land.

David Tress

See images of David’s work here

To see a short film about the exhibition click here

21st July 2020

NEWSLETTER 6- David Tress: Romantic Landscape

In July 1798 William and Dorothy Wordsworth made a trip to the Wye Valley, a place that had become a well-known destination for leisured tourists in search of Picturesque landscape since the publication in 1782 of William Gilpin’s ‘Observations on the River Wye’. They had travelled from the Quantocks where in the previous years the Wordsworth’s and Coleridge had combined to create the poems that were to be published as “Lyrical Ballads’. William Wordsworth’s experience in the Wye Valley was the inspiration for his poem ‘Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey….’ and on his return he stopped at Bristol to visit the publisher of Lyrical Ballads, Joseph Cottle. The printing of the books was well advanced but Wordsworth persuaded Cottle to find room for ‘Tintern Abbey’ at the end of the Lyrical Ballads.

‘Tintern Abbey’ is a work that sets out some of the key elements of a Romantic response to landscape. In it we find themes that were essential to Romantic art: landscape as a site in which the past is felt to be fused with present experience; the landscape as a whole – earth and sky connected in a total experience and the dissolution of the self as part that experience; the spiritual perceived as immanent – as contained within – all elements of the landscape- raindrops, leaves, trees or clouds may be charged with spiritual content. Contemporaries and later artists and poets pursued these themes.

Constable, though relishing the earthiness of his Stour Valley fields, ponds, barges and buildings nevertheless perceived the landscapes that he delighted in as God’s work and therefore suffused with spiritual meaning. Samuel Palmer, in his visionary paintings of Shoreham in the 1820s and 30s, undoubtedly saw these landscapes as imbued with spiritual significance. A century later we find David Bomberg painting immediate and expressive – indeed expressionist – landscapes in Britain and Spain which record a personal spiritual response to his subjects, and Joan Eardley’s paintings in the 1950s of stormy seas at Catterline on the east coast of Scotland give a powerful sense of the painter losing herself in the immensity of sea and sky.

We might expect Neo-romanticism, in its brief heyday in the 1940s and 50s, to furnish numerous examples of landscape as the site of spiritual experience but we have to do a bit of searching. Paul Nash, the ‘father’ of the Neo-romantics, whilst adopting Surrealism as a modernising format in which to present his work, started as a painter of late Symbolist landscapes, and a sense of the spiritual as something immanent in the objects and places that he painted- this is reasserted in the late series of landscapes such as ‘Landscape of the Vernal Equinox’ of 1944. These late landscapes are imbued with spiritual and mythical portentousness, and remind us of his constant use of the phrase ‘genius loci’ – spirit of place. Graham Sutherland was greatly influenced by Nash, and Sutherland’s paintings – many of them resulting from his discovery of Pembrokeshire in the late 1930s – have a great sense of ‘presence’, albeit rarely a benign one.

I was a student at the time of Abstract Expressionism and although abstraction in the twentieth century rarely had much to do with landscape, we should not forget how fundamental a sense of the spiritual was to Rothko. Even Jackson Pollock was heir to the Romantic tradition, filling his works with spiritual and emotional torment which he poured into their making. Whilst I am always fascinated by the details of what I see – the topography: the forms, textures, patterns and lines of the landscapes that I look at, I am never happy unless the painting that I am making also records my response – emotional or spiritual – to the landscape that I am involved with.

 

David Tress

 

See images of David’s work here

To see a short film about the exhibition click here

13th July 2020

NEWSLETTER 5- David Tress: Paintings with a History 

Over many years, the way that I make paintings has steadily evolved so that now they usually have very heavily painted, worked and layered surfaces. This has parallels with the ways that landscapes are made – continually marked, scoured, added to and modified by weather, human impact and geology.

But this is not the reason that I developed my way of working. It certainly wasn’t a calculated or planned development of technique and use of materials, and was far more to do with gut feeling and instinct about how to create an image with depth and intensity.  Using materials in this way is an essential part of the way that I paint in the studio rather than outside in the landscape. My subject matter – patterns of land, sea coast, buildings and woodland – is gathered directly from the landscape by drawing – I take a sketch book and spend time looking and travelling by car or on foot and stopping to make drawings in pencil or pen. These can be fairly brief if I’m looking at a landscape that I know well, but can also be quite detailed in new environments.

I take the sketchbooks back with me to the studio and it there that I begin work on fully worked out paintings or drawings. This is important because it means that in the studio I am not just making topographical paintings – paintings that simply record the details of buildings or places. The studio paintings are about something else – they are an attempt to make images which record something about my response to what I have seen and drawn in the sketchbook – they are records of a relationship with the landscape.

In the studio I often begin work by making a quite straightforward drawing on a sheet of the very thick water colour paper that I always use. This helps me get an idea of what I am dealing with – the details of the subject matter, the way the image fits into the sheet of paper. I begin painting by blocking in the big masses of the composition, all the time redrawing and beginning to move the image around. The redrawing may be in paint or pencil but is often scored with a sharp point into the paper. Scored lines are the start of a process, a gradual accretion of physical marks that may be visible through to the end of the painting or may very likely be half covered with paint or completely covered over, erased or torn away. Slowly the image evolves building up from scored and torn paper and paint– I already have a clear idea of what the final picture will be, what I want to say about the landscape by making the image, but the way in which I might arrive at a final statement is far from clear.

Ideas will be developed – and erased, the painting will expand and contract, ebb and flow. One major struggle with the painting is how to achieve something that expresses the power and immediacy of the landscape that I saw? Certainly not just by making a drawing and filling in the shapes with paint. Real landscapes change, are unpredictable. The experience of standing out in the land can vary from calm and pleasant to uncomfortable, cold or even dangerous. How then to attempt to achieve a sense of this power in the painting?

Risks must be taken – I know well the details of my drawing in the sketch book, but to attempt to achieve an immediacy, an excitement of something newly seen and discovered I have to take risks: risks with applying the paint and risks with the material of the painting – scoring tearing, replacing and adding to the image. The elements of risk, gut feeling and immediacy in applying paint must always be tempered and balanced by employing the disciplines of drawing, tone, colour, composition, the creation of illusionistic space through use of tone and perspective, and careful attention to tone and colour to give the feeling of atmosphere, time of year, time of day and weather. The painting at this point is precariously balanced between success and failure – if it is to succeed it will need skill, discipline, vigour and some indefinable essence that may or may not appear.

 

All these processes will be continued over days or sometimes weeks and if all goes well the finished painting will carry the physical evidence of the efforts made to create it – the half covered marks, the layers of paint and paper the quality of colour and tone and composition. In other words it will be a painting with a history.

David Tress

See images of David’s work here

To see a short film about the exhibition click here

7th July 2020

 

NEWSLETTER 4- David Tress: Picturesque Tours 

 

There is a long history of artists, armed usually with a sketch book and water colour paints, touring Britain, the continent and further afield, and discovering, examining and drawing what they saw. Roman artists must have travelled to some extent to find subjects for their villa walls, and Renaissance artists on their trips across the Alps between northern and southern Europe observed extraordinary mountainous landscapes and included them as backdrops in their religious paintings.

The first great age of artist travellers was the eighteenth century when in Britain painters such as Paul Sandby, David Cox, J M W Turner and many others set out to tour England, Wales and parts of Scotland  armed with water colour paints and tough sheets of handmade paper. They recorded landscapes, buildings, rivers and sea coasts, and they were influenced by writers such as William Gilpin who from the 1770s advocated a careful selection of landscape views that he considered suitable for appreciation – ‘Picturesque’ landscapes that had nicely balanced and informal contrasts of rough textures and were quite distinct from the more formal classically influenced subjects beloved of earlier generations.

When the idea of the Sublime – of landscapes of awe and even terror – became fashionable, Turner was in his element with threatening storms and vertiginous Alpine views. These hard-working and tough artists favoured Picturesque routes through Britain, and putting up with goodness only knows what hardships of inclement weather and flea-infested inns, created an immense body of work which, to this day, influences the way in which we see landscape.

As a student I enthusiastically embraced some of the then current fashions of the art world. I started by following Abstract Expressionism and, later, spent time as a conceptual artist. Later when I left art college I abandoned conceptual art because I realised that what I really wanted to be was a painter. I also flouted the then (and still now) conventions of the fashionable art world by deciding to paint in water colour. I had a gut feeling that in this medium lay the route ahead. I also began to read some of the books written by late eighteenth century theorists on landscape painting such as William Gilpin.

Later, from 2001, I worked on a project culminating in a touring exhibition called ‘Chasing Sublime Light’. For this project I researched, and later spent time following, the routes that eighteenth century painters took through North Wales, Northern England and Scotland in pursuit of Picturesque and Sublime subject matter. From this experience I learnt much of interest about the earlier artists’ journeys, and was also keen to appreciate the modern developments along the way.

I remember one occasion when I found the spot from which Girtin had painted his view of Kirkstall Abbey in 1800. Girtin’s view of this picturesque ruined abbey at evening set in a quiet and spacious river valley had been replaced with busy, dirty main roads, traffic signs, pylons and high rise buildings on the skyline. All these elements of contemporary life were enthusiastically incorporated into my later painting of the spot.

 

David Tress

See images of David’s work here

To see a short film about the exhibition click here

30th June 2020

NEWSLETTER 3- David Tress: Churches in the Landscape 

For as long as I have been painting I have also been visiting churches – not so much for festivals, services and other events that take place in them, but more often when I find myself passing by on a quiet week day, and I am able to spend time absorbing the filtered light of the interior and the story of the church’s past which is revealed in its interior details and its exterior construction.

Cathedrals, of course, are breathtaking and magnificent architectural and engineering masterworks in stone but my greatest fascination is with small parish churches. Whereas cathedrals are usually built from stone imported from a considerable distance – Caen or Portland stone are good examples – small parish churches are literally rooted to the landscape in which they stand, built out of the materials that surround them whether that be local stone and slate in Wales or splendid mixtures of flint, red tile and thatch in East Anglia.

The history of the church will be revealed in its styles of stonework, arch and window, and also in the materials used. Alton Barnes in Wiltshire sports a jaunty red brick chancel proudly dated 1748 which is attached to a Saxon stone nave. Such modest parish churches may show clear evidence of the wider patterns of social and economic history.

Occasionally a medieval ‘doom’ board showing the Day of Judgement will be found above the chancel arch: saved souls are shown being led to paradise whilst sinners are herded into the mouth of Hell by monstrous devils. More likely any doom board will have been replaced by a royal coat of arms from the centuries after the Reformation. The church may retain clear window glass and box pews from the eighteenth century, an expression of both protestant simplicity and an increasingly successful property-owning middle class as at Molland on the southern edge of Exmoor. By contrast Blisland Church near Bodmin Moor – a favourite of John Betjeman – has a wonderfully extravagant rood screen created at the end of the nineteenth century, an effusive expression of late Victorian religiosity.

Often a church visit is as much about the people, places and landscapes discovered on the way as it is about the destination itself. Perhaps a chance meeting with vicar or rector, or – more usually – a lady arranging flowers will enliven the visit with some local stories of the church, village and surrounding area. The church building itself is a demonstration of the village life and community – evidence of changing political, social and religious tides and the ebb and flow of prosperity and hard times.

All these things are a trigger to my interest in making drawings and paintings of churches, but in particular the look and feel of a church, the way in which it sits in its landscape and the visual and textural quality of the building are the spur to making a painting. Even more important than this is the simple ‘feel’ of the church – how does it feel to sit quietly inside allowing my eye to trace the patterns of sunlight from the windows falling on pews or Harvest Festival offerings. Whether I am returning to a favourite and much-visited country church, or on a brief visit to a newly explored area of Britain, it is this ‘resonance’ that more than anything makes me want to record the experience in paint.

David Tress

See images of David’s work here

To see a short film about the exhibition click here

22 June 2020 

NEWSLETTER 2 – David Tress : Past and Present

My first visit to Pembrokeshire, nearly fifty years ago, was as a schoolboy on a hiking trip in the summer holidays. Later during my time at art college in Nottingham I again visited and, immediately after the final college exhibition, I moved there for good, arriving with all my possessions – which amounted to not much more than some clothes, some books and a table. The table I still have in my studio, and after all these years it is encrusted with gnarled layers of paint  and tied together with string.

I have talked to other people about their first experience of visiting Pembrokeshire and they quite often remember it as almost revelatory. For me that first visit as a schoolboy – to the area around St Davids – was memorable and impressive but it wasn’t until some years later that I began to work out why. Certainly the details of that landscape, its small fields bounded by earth and stone banks topped with thorn trees, and rising to isolated outcrops of rock, have a magical quality. More fundamental than all these elements is a deeper sense of being in contact with a landscape in which the past is vital part of the present day.

Driving past Clegyr Boia, a rock outcrop near St Davids, the foreground may be a screen of thorns and a traffic sign, but we know that Neolithic people lived on top of the outcrop and that the massive stone remains of their burial chamber lie on the adjacent headland with its wide view of the western sea. Overlooking the north coast of Pembrokeshire at Strumble Head the rocky hill of Garn Fawr, is topped by the tumbled remains of an Iron Age hill fort.  On the lower slopes of the ‘Garn’  John Piper had his studio in one of two cottages half sunk into the landscape. Other artists provide a link between the recent past and the ancient prehistory of this landscape. Graham Sutherland made one of his best early etchings, ‘Clegyr Boia’, 1938, as a result of his first visits to the area.

Mythical and religious themes link together the present and the past in this landscape. The magical wild boar of Welsh mythology,‘Twrch Trwyth’,  appeared out of the sea at Porthclais just south of Clegyr Boia before being hunted over Pembrokeshire by Arthur and his band of men.  In the sixth century, the age of the saints, St David established his group of humble monastic huts in a marshy valley which is now the site of St David’s Cathedral.

As a centre of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages the Cathedral was a focus for pilgrimage routes and the small chapels that sprang up along these ways to provide rest, food and spiritual sustenance for the pilgrims. The chapels were abandoned after the Reformation but ruins of some still exist.

For others the only evidence is now just a name as at Parc y Capel (chapel field) just outside St Davids. The ruins and way markers of old pilgrim routes are now passed by holiday traffic and caravans; they remind us of the rich past of this vibrant present landscape and indeed in recent years increasing numbers of today’s pilgrims are once again following the old routes.

David Tress

See images of David’s work here

To see a short film about the exhibition click here

15 June 2020

 

NEWSLETTER 2 – David Tress:  Landscape as Palimpsest

Most of the paintings and drawings that I make are characterised by their very obvious, and vigorously textured, paint and paper surfaces. This way of working has developed gradually over many years and has to do with my wish – or rather, something stronger than just a wish; more a gut feeling – that I want to make paintings which, in their physical presence, have some parallel to the physical immediacy of the actual landscapes that I go out to draw.

The sheer excitement of visiting certain places where the landscape may be spread out in front of me, charged with life by movement of sun, shadow, cloud and rain, is something that I want to convey to the best of my ability. To achieve this vigour I find it necessary to work and rework a painting many times with layers of paint and collage – using a very thick and high quality watercolour paper – and one of the qualities resulting from this way of working is that the finished paintings show the ‘history’ of their making in the dense pattern of brush strokes, and the web of scraped, scored and collaged marks. Earlier marks may be hidden by later paint strokes, or perhaps half-hidden in the later additions of paint. One way of looking at this is as a ‘palimpsest’.

What is a palimpsest? Strictly speaking a palimpsest is a half erased image of writing or drawing that occurs when a medieval manuscript – usually on vellum – is cleaned off for re-use. Despite the cleaning, the original text is never completely erased, and still shows as a ‘ghost’ image hidden behind later script. The parallel with the way of making paintings that I have described is clear, and there are more ways in which the word ‘palimpsest’ can be applied not just to paintings, but to landscape itself.

Humans have been making marks on the land for several thousands of years – paths, roads, ditches, field boundaries, earthworks – all of these create physical marks which remain stamped to varying degrees on the landscape for millennia. Some of the earlier marks will be half obscured, other later marks will be much clearer. The idea that these marks form a sort of landscape manuscript from which the history of the landscape can be read came increasingly to the fore in the later nineteenth century and developed further in the twentieth century. Rudyard Kipling, in his poem ‘Puck of Pook’s Hill’ published in 1906, describes the series of marks on the landscape of Sussex where he lived which, if correctly read, show the history and pre-history of human occupation there.

In the 1920s the archaeologist OGS Crawford made groundbreaking discoveries using the new technique of aerial photography to see otherwise invisible marks on the landscape made by human occupation. In March 1934 the archaeological periodical ‘Antiquity’, which was edited by Crawford, included an article by H J Randall in which the author used the word ‘palimpsest’ to describe English landscape.

So landscape as palimpsest parallels painting as palimpsest and is a description rich in suggestion and depth.

David Tress

See images of David’s work here

To see a short film about the exhibition click here

April 2020

Congratulations to Akash Bhatt on being chosen from more than 4700 entries to be shortlisted for the Derwent Prize 2020 for ‘Living Room’.  Regular visitors to Beaux Arts will recognise Akash’s works and Madhu, Akash’s mother. A portrait of Madhu was the winner of the Sunday Times watercolour award in 2015.  She has also been a regular visitor to Beaux Arts over the years to attend opening evenings for her multi-award winning son !!  More of Akash’s work can be viewed here:   http://www.beauxartsbath.co.uk/artists/akash-bhatt/

The Derwent Art Prize is being shown online. Click here to browse the 70 shortlisted works of art.

It will be opening at gallery@oxo, London and 20 Rue Saint Claude, Paris in due course (early 2021) and was due to tour the UK (including a stint at Trowbridge art Gallery in Wiltshire).

The People’s Choice Award can be found and voted for on Facebook

Read more about the Derwent prize on: https://www.derwentart.com/en-gb/c/about/company/derwent-art-prize

February 2020

Congratulations to Jack Doherty on being shortlisted for the Loewe Craft Prize 2020!
The Loewe Foundation has announced 30 shortlisted artists for the 2020 edition of the Craft Prize. The prize, now in its fourth year, presents an exciting array of objects that prove a mastery of material, from 6 continents and 18 different countries. The annual prize was launched in 2016 to celebrate excellence, artistic merit and newness in modern craftsmanship, as well as a tribute to Loewe’s beginnings as a craft workshop in 1846.

 

The award, conceived by creative director Jonathan Anderson aims to acknowledge the importance of craft in today’s culture. The winner will be announced 19 May 2020. Each finalist’s work will be exhibited at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris from 21 May to 12 July 2020.

June – October 2019

Jennifer Anderson is 1 of 44 artists whose work has been selected to show in the final group of the National Portrait Gallery’s ‘BP Portrait Award’ exhibition.
Her shortlisted painting ‘Saskia’ is below. You can vote for Jennifer’s painting here– the winner of the public vote receives the BP Portrait Visitors’ Choice Award.
Good luck Jennifer!

Saskia has been painted by Jennifer before, she spotted her on a friend’s instagram feed. She was intrigued by her ethereal quality and asked if she would be willing to sit for a painted portrait.
See more paintings of Saskia here at the gallery.
If you would like any more information about Jennifer’s work please contact us.

 

 

September 2019

The Royal West of England Academy’s 167th annual open exhibition opened its doors on Sunday 29 September. Located in a spectacular Grade II listed building in the heart of the Bristol, the RWA is the UK’s only regional Royal Academy of Art and one of only five in total. The RWA is committed to providing great art for everybody, and to promoting the understanding and enjoyment of art for the widest possible audience.
Exhibitions at the RWA always feature work by leading contemporary artists (including the RWA’s own Academicians) alongside great works from the past, opening up new and surprising contexts and discussions- we spotted some familiar faces in their new show…

 

Beth Carter

 

Anna Gillespie

 

Sarah Gillespie

 

Joy Wolfenden Brown

July 2019

Akiko Hirai is among 29 artists nominated for this year’s LOEWE Foundation Craft Prize. The prize, of 50,000 euros, will be presented to the winner at the opening of the 2019 Loewe Craft Prize exhibition in Tokyo.

The LOEWE Foundation Craft Prize, now its third edition, champions artists who have ‘made fundamentally important contributions to the development of contemporary craft’ and ‘whose talent, vision and will to innovate promises to set a new standard for the future’. It was launched by the LOEWE fashion brand’s creative director Jonathan Anderson, a craft collector himself. The work of the shortlisted makers – selected from over 2,500 submissions from more than 100 countries – will go on show at Isamu Noguchi’s indoor stone garden ‘Heaven’ at the Sogetsu Foundation in Tokyo.

Akiko Hirai’s next exhibition here at Beaux Arts Bath opens in October 2019.

April 2019

Anna Gillespie’s new, permanent sculpture ‘SHIP’, commissioned for Morecambe Bay Partnership at Half Moon Bay, becomes simultaneously a welcoming beacon and a symbol of fond farewell at a traditional point of departure and arrival. Purposely crafted to be of no clear historic reference, yet making overt reference to the Viking longboats of former Bay dwellers, the evidently seafaring structure marks the boundary of land and sea. The two, accompanying ‘boatmen’ figures look forward and back, a reference to both the nature of any journey and the inevitable changes in Morecambe Bay’s landscape, population and industrial heritage, where fishing and shipping sit side-by-side with the contemporary influence of nuclear power. The sculpture will offer viewers the chance to stop and reflect, continuing the Bay’s ancient traditions as a place of retreat, spiritual reflection and pilgrimage.

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March 2019

Congratulations to Patricia Shone who won the ‘Emmanuel Cooper Award’ at Ceramic Art London. The ‘Emmanuel Cooper Award’ is given by The Craft Pottery Charitable Trust which was set up in 1991.
For the last 5 years, the Trust has invited a museum with a notable collection of contemporary ceramics to select a piece of work at CAL which they would like to acquire for their permanent collection. The Trust buys the work from the potter using a bequest from the estate of the late Emmanuel Cooper and donates it to the museum.
This year the Victoria & Albert Museum was invited to make the choice, and chose the wonderful piece below.

  

Erosion Bowl, hand formed from high iron clay. Wood fired on sea shells to the point of the ceramic form softening. 

 

See more of Patricia’s work here.

October 2018

Anna Gillespie has collaborated with engineering firm Buro Happold to create a sculpture that will be installed on the Elizabeth Parade, Bath at the end of October. The sculpture ‘Maid of the Bridge’ is being made using pieces of Victorian metal – obtained when the Victoria Bridge was being refurbished.

Watch the video below to hear Anna Gillespie talk about the ‘Maid of the Bridge’ project.

 

May – December 2018

Dartington Arts has invited Sarah Gillespie to be their artist in residence on the Dartington Hall Estate in Devon. You can see what she is getting up to on her instagram feed here.

   

January 2017

A huge congratulations to ceramicist Adam Buick who has received a ‘Creative Wales Award’ from the Arts Council of Wales. There are awards of up to £25,000 for artists who have had achievements in their career and will encourage creative experimentation and research for future practice.

‘My artistic vision is to make work that embodies the landscape that inspires me. I use a single pure jar form as a canvas to map my observations from an ongoing study of my surroundings. Through the use of gathered materials in the ceramic process and through acts carried out within the landscape I hope to create a narrative, one that conveys a unique sense of place.’ – Adam Buick

December 2016

‘How to Make a Proper Alien’ a new book by artist Nathan Ford.

44 pages, 22 x 28 cm. All illustrations are from original paintings by Nathan Ford. A limited number of books will be signed by the artist, contact us here for more information.

September 2016

The Royal West of England Academy’s 164th Annual open exhibition features a great mixture of artists- including some familiar faces…

Anna Gillespie

 

 

Sarah Gillespie

June – Aug 2016

The Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy in London shows us all aspects of contemporary art – and this year’s exhibition features a number of familiar artists…

Sarah Gillespie’s brilliant and contemplative mezzotint ‘Absence’ is on show, with a landscape by Tom Hughes and some of Donna McLean’s atmospheric paintings lit only by torchlight…

 

Sarah Gillespie ‘Absence’

 

 

 

 

May 2016

After winning the prestigious Sunday Times Watercolour Artist of the Year 2015, Akash Bhatt is on the judging panel for the 2016 prize! The other judges for the competition are; Sara Dudman, artist; Simon Oldfield, Curator and gallery owner; Desmond Shawe-Taylor CVO, Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures and Louis Wise, Critic and Writer, The Sunday Times.

The Winners will be announced in the Culture section of the Sunday Times on Sunday 28th August.

Pictured: Akash Bhatt with the winning painting of his Mother titled ‘Blue Room’ 2015, (and the lady herself on the right).

April 2016

Anna Gillespie has been chosen to exhibit in the ‘Elements of Capability’ Outdoor group sculpture show at Lacock Abbey. The show commemorates the 300th anniversary of the birth of Capability Brown, whose vision transformed the grounds of the landed gentry in the 1700s and is on from 30 April – 22 May.

Read more about the event here

ANNA GILLESPIE

‘Let Heaven Go’

Bronze, Ed. 3 233 x 60 x 60 cm.

November 2015

The wonderfully talented Sarah Gillespie has had her beautiful charcoal drawings chosen to cover the new editions of Wuthering Heights, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Jane Eyre – being republished by Penguin Vintage Classics ahead of next year’s 200th anniversary of the extraordinary Bronte sisters. Well done Sarah- they look sensational!

 

Read more about how Sarah’s exquisite drawings were chosen here

November 2015

Nathan Ford’s painting ‘Party Wall’ has been shortlisted for the John Ruskin Prize 2015. The winner will be announced in February 2016. Nathan will have new work on view during the London Art Fair at the Business Design Centre, Upper Street, Islington, Stand G19, 20-24 January.

 

September 2015

Akash Bhatt has won the Sunday Times Watercolour Artist of the Year Award 2015.

The winning painting is a portrait of his Mother titled ‘Blue Room’. He has used colour and composition brilliantly, we love her striking orange sari- congratulations Akash!

To view the video of the judges deliberation process and their fantastic comments click here

 

June – Aug 2015

The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition offers a fantastic array of contemporary art – and this year’s exhibition is a riot of colour, variety and features 4 of Beaux Art’s talented artists…

Jo Oakley

 

Simon Wright

 

Donna McLean

June 2015

The brilliant ceramic sculptor Nick Mackman has won the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation (DSWF) Wildlife Artist of the Year 2015. She was the overall competition winner with her charming sculpture ‘Sleepyheads’ pictured below.

To read more follow the link below:

http://www.davidshepherd.org/news-events/news/devon-sculptor-is-the-2015-dswf-wildlife-artist-of-the-year/

May 2015

It is fantastic to see two of Anna Gillespie’s beautiful bronze sculptures being incorporated into Chris Beardshaw’s garden at RHS Chelsea Flower Show again this year.

‘Let Heaven Go’ (pictured below) is a striking silhouette amongst the lush foliage and his dark patina goes with the velvety purples and is almost bark-like when looking through the trees…

‘Trust’ is situated in another part of the garden, framed in an alcove he brings a different, more intimate pose to the garden.

Read more about the Gold medal winning garden below:

The Morgan Stanley Healthy Cities Garden, designed by Chris Beardshaw

September 2014

We are thrilled that Takeshi Yasuda has been awarded an honorary degree from Bath Spa University, three weeks prior to the opening of his show here at Beaux Arts Bath on October 11th.

June 2014

Above is Anna Gillespie’s sculpture ‘Gateway’ made from recycled paper at the Glastonbury Festival 2014. Watch a video of the installation by clicking on the image.

June 2013

Anna Gillespie’s The Tree People sculpture forms part of a gateway to the 60-acre Green Fields zone at this year’s Glastonbury Festival.

To read a BBC article about the commission please click here.

May 2013

Anna Gillespie’s two bronze sculptures Homage and To The Limit are exhibited in Chris Beardshaw’s Gold award winning Arthritis Research UK Garden at the 100th RHS Chelsea Flower Show. Watch the video here.

Homage is sited in the Veiled Garden and To The Limit is displayed centrally in the Lucid Garden.

Please click on thumbnails below to see full size articles and links.

Kensington & Chelsea Magazine, May 2013 – issue 015

   

 The Arthritis Research UK Garden Guide, PDF

April 2013

Elisabeth Frink’s exhibition at the Beaux Arts in Cork Street receives much critical acclaim. Coinciding with release of the handsome catalogue raisonné, published by Lund Humphries and edited by Annette Ratuszniak, it reproduces all of Frink’s 402 sculptures and includes a short story by Michael Morpurgo.

Read the recent Telegraph article written by Andrew Lambirth celebrating the work of Elisabeth Frink here.

September 2012

Sarah Gillespie’s Drypoint engraving  ‘Peppered Moths’ (above)  has been chosen as one of the 125 works in this year’s Threadneedle Prize which runs at the Mall Galleries from 26 September to 13 October.  Following the Threadneedle prize Sarah is showing alongside her sister, sculptor Anna Gillespie, at Beaux Arts, between 15 October and 6 November.

May 2012

Nick Mackman has won second prize in the Wildlife artist of the year award.  She is photographed below with David Shepherd, and with her award winning wild dogs…..

   

 May 2012

Nathan Ford’s wonderful painting ‘Joachim’  appeared in the 2012 BP prize held at the National Portrait gallery in London. Brian Sewell commented ‘A number of small paintings require a measure of contemplation before we see how good they are … past the sketch left unfinished at the shrewdly chosen moment. Half a dozen check the visitor’s stride with some combination of perception, insight, understanding and the painter’s sleight-of-hand — by Nathan Ford (whose Joachim, unfinished, not wholly clarified but delicately smudged, reinforces a conviction formed last year that he is a painter to watch)’

To read the full article click here

Nathan’s painting of ‘Alpha’ was exhibited at the Royal Society of Portrait painters at the Mall Galleries in May too.

 

April 2012

Nathan’s portrait ‘Abi II’ collected the second highest total votes for best painting in last year’s ‘People’s Vote’ at the  BP portrait  prize exhibition.

  

Writing about the BP show, amid the ‘hooey phooey and bilge’ , according to the Evening Standard’s Brian Sewell,

If push came to shove I might just consent to sit for Nathan Ford whose ragged attack on Abi (a cider-sodden tramp I presume) might suit a man of my age and general dishevelment. I sense that he sees something beyond the surface of this sitter, a Scholar Gipsy, Ancient Mariner or Lear, and serves him well enough – though broader shoulders (or none) would have offered better support to so wild a head. There is something of Ilya Repin about it, his Tolstoy or another Volga Boatman.

Click here to read Brian Sewell’s complete article for the London Evening Standard.

May 2011

Anthony Scott’s meeting with the Queen during her historic trip to Ireland , where she unveiled a sculpture commission he made for the Irish National Stud in County Kildare, is pictured below.

 

      

      

 

The Irish Arts Review article on the Queen’s visit is here.

There is also an article in the Summer 2009 edition of the Irish Arts Review which looks at Anthony’s constant reference to Irish myth and legend.  Click here to read.

The article metamorphosis in the interior design magazine ‘Forma’ is included here.

Sept 2010

AKASH BHATT’s painting ‘Life’ was chosen as the winner of the ‘London Lives’ exhibition and a 25 feet long replica of the work is displayed on Blackfriars bridge in London until spring 2012.

Click here to read the Bankside Gallery article.

Click here to read the Guardian article.

Click here to read the London SE1 article.

Click here to read the This Is Local – London article.

Oct 2010

AKASH BHATT won the Penguin Prize in the Sunday Times Watercolour Competition.

Click the thumbnails below to read an article about the competition.

       

Click on the thumbnail below to see Akash Bhatt’s page in the exhibition catalogue.

Click here to read the Arts Hub article about the competition.