SHEILA CLARKSON
New works

5 June to 3 July

Please join us for the opening day. The artist will be in attendance from 12- 4 p.m. on 5 June 2021

Yesterday the sun was most definitely out, it was actually warm and I did believe summer might have arrived. Today? Drizzle.
Anyone who watched the sun set or the ‘super flower blood full moon’ (cf Metro) rise two evenings ago must have felt the magic.
I went down to the river Avon for the last of the light and had a valley full of birdsong to myself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dunbar-born John Muir is someone who would have related to this..
This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere;
the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising.
Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.

I have got to know the area where I live much better in this year (that time forgot). I suspect this might be common.
It is a beautiful part of the country, where, in the time it takes to post on Snapchat you can veer off a busy main road and be amongst an undisturbed carpet of bluebells and wild garlic.
The dog loves the range of smells, and though he runs enthusiastically to the river, he won’t swim unless completely distracted in hot pursuit of a stick. One can be fairly sheltered from the elements, and tune into the music of the surroundings:

Upend the rain stick and what happens next
Is a music that you never would have known
To listen for. In a cactus stalk

Downpour, sluice-rush, spillage and backwash
Come flowing through. You stand there like a pipe
Being played by water, you shake it again lightly

And diminuendo runs through all its scales
Like a gutter stopping trickling. And now here comes
A sprinkle of drops out of the freshened leaves,

Then subtle little wets off grass and daisies;
Then glitter-drizzle, almost-breaths of air.
Upend the stick again. What happens next

Is undiminished for having happened once,
Twice, ten, a thousand time before.
Who cares if all the music that transpires

Is the fall of grit or dry seeds through a cactus?
You are like a rich man entering heaven
Through the ear of a raindrop. Listen now again.

So, from still life to stillness.

Our next solo show, opening on 5 June, features the work of Bristol Artist Sheila Clarkson.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sheila draws using mainly white pastel on to black paper, describing her technique as light-mapping.
Preferring to work from observation out of doors and plein air sketching- rather than relying on photography- her main area of reference is Abbot’s Pool, on the outskirts of Bristol.
She sketches quickly to catch the changing light as it casts coruscating patterns on the trees and bankside vegetation, dappling and moving through the wood and on the water.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ceramics will be provided by gallery favourite Lara Scobie:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We do not have all the works for Lara’s show as yet.
Let us know if you would like to be contacted by email when her works go live on the website.
Please note her work is popular !!

Our still life exhibition will finish this Saturday. Many thanks to all those who have visited over the past couple of weeks.
It still feels like a novelty to have so many people come through the gallery !!
It has been a pleasure to see everybody and every visitor is appreciated.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And finally…..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and imbibes delight through every pore. I go and come with a strange liberty in Nature, a part of herself. As I walk along the stony shore of the pond in my shirt sleeves, though it is cool as well as cloudy and windy, and I see nothing special to attract me, all the elements are unusually congenial to me. The bullfrogs trump to usher in the night, and the note of the whippoorwill is borne on the rippling wind from over the water. Sympathy with the fluttering alder and poplar leaves almost takes away my breath; yet, like the lake, my serenity is rippled but not ruffled. These small waves raised by the evening wind are as remote from storm as the smooth reflecting surface. Though it is now dark, the wind still blows and roars in the wood, the waves still dash, and some creatures lull the rest with their notes. The repose is never complete. The wildest animals do not repose, but seek their prey now; the fox, and skunk, and rabbit, now roam the fields and woods without fear. They are Nature’s watchmen…

From Henry Thoreau ‘Walden’

Thank you as always for reading.

Aidan