From the Mountains to the Sea
-1 April to 28 April

We are ushering in Spring with a burst of colour and variety in an inspiring collection of landscape paintings.  ‘From the Mountains to the Sea’ sees Jenny Pockley’s Alpine oil paintings share the walls with Stewart Edmondson’s Dartmoor woodlands. Stormy seascapes from Shetland and Sussex are courtesy of Janette Kerr and Mark Johnston. The quiet atmospheric works of Gill Rocca or Andrew Crocker provoke a more mystical encounter with the outdoors.  The show will also feature work by gallery favourites like Anna Gillespie and Akash Bhatt, as well as Tom Homewood, Miranda Brookes, Kate Sherman and Celia de Serra.

Come and joing us on Saturday for the opening day.  We are here from 10a.m. until 5 p.m.

 

 

Sometimes I grow weary of the days, with all their fits and starts.
I want to climb some old gray mountain, slowly, taking
the rest of my lifetime to do it….

I want to look back at everything, forgiving it all,
and peaceful, knowing the last thing there is to know.
All that urgency! Not what the earth is about!…

In ten thousand years, maybe, a piece of the mountain will fall.

Mary Oliver The Poet Dreams of the Mountain

Stewart Emdondson’s paintings depict a love for his untamed surroundings. Anyone who has walked on Dartmoor with Stewart, or visited the nearby southern coast, visintg the scenes he paints in situ, would almost say that he is a person who welcomes bad weather with open arms, brushes at the ready….

 

 

Gill Rocca’s paintngs offer a more tranquil mood altogether….

 

 

That mystical atmosphere of cool morning rolling mists…

I climbed through woods in the hour—before—dawn dark.
Evil air, a frost—making stillness,

Not a leaf, not a bird—
A world cast in frost. I came out above the wood

Where my breath left tortuous statues in the iron light.
But the valleys were draining the darkness

Till the moorline– blackening dregs of the brightening grey –
Halved the sky ahead. And I saw the horses:

Huge in the dense grey –ten together –
Megalith—still. They breathed, making no move,

With draped manes and tilted hind—hooves,
Making no sound.

I passed: not one snorted or jerked its head.
Grey silent fragments
Of a grey still world.

I listened in emptiness on the moor—ridge.
The curlew’s tear turned its edge on the silence.

Slowly detail leafed from the darkness. Then the sun
Orange, red, red erupted

Silently, and splitting to its core tore and flung cloud,
Shook the gulf open, showed blue,

And the big planets hanging—
I turned

Stumbling in a fever of a dream, down towards
The dark woods, from the kindling tops,

And came the horses.
There, still they stood,
But now steaming, and glistening under the flow of light,

Their draped stone manes, their tilted hind—hooves
Stirring under a thaw while all around them

The frost showed its fires. But still they made no sound.
Not one snorted or stamped,

Their hung heads patient as the horizons,
High over valleys, in the red levelling rays—

In din of the crowded streets, going among the years, the faces,
May I still meet my memory in so lonely a place

Between the streams and the red clouds, hearing curlews,
Hearing the horizons endure.

Ted Hughes The Horses

 

 

 

And, ambling quietly along….Kate Sherman’s work depicts the thoughtfulness of a forest, the melancholy of a road at twilight, the comfort of a light in a house at night…

 

 

The bicycles go by in twos and threes –
There’s a dance in Billy Brennan’s barn to-night,
And there’s the half-talk code of mysteries
And the wink-and-elbow language of delight.
Half-past eight and there is not a spot
Upon a mile of road, no shadow thrown
That might turn out a man or woman, not
A footfall tapping secrecies of stone.
I have what every poet hates in spite
Of all the solemn talk of contemplation.
Oh, Alexander Selkirk knew the plight
Of being king and government and nation.
A road, a mile of kingdom, I am king
Of banks and stones and every blooming thing.

Inishkeen Road by Patrick Kavanagh

 

 

Click on the images above for links to the relevant pages on the website.

An update and reminder Lara Scobie’s webpage will be updated fully by the end of the day on Thursday 30 March.  Please let me know if you would like to be alerted when the work goes live on the website.

Please message, email or call for more information.

Thank you for reading,

Aidan