Our third viewing room will be open Wed - Sat from Wednesday 1 October through to Saturday 1 November - read on and book your visit.
We look forward to welcome your visit to see the work of two wonderful artists. One is Norfolk based painter Linda Jamieson who is joined by Suffolk based ceramic artist, Steven Will.
It will be a chance to see their work before others get a chance to add them to their collections. Make a date to come visit us without the distractions of a larger group exhibition. There will be an opportunity to hear more from the artists directly.
As Linda says:
How do we make sense of the world around us? A question that has teased humanity over the centuries can require political, philosophical or spiritual thinking. From a young age I used painting to explore the environment around me, following a very English tradition from Turner to Hockney , I felt that by painting everything I could see (and much that I couldn’t) that I would come to own and understand the nature of existence. Many years later I am still engaged in this attempt to capture meaning through working, and although the outcome always falls short I am compelled to continue painting.
If the observation and practice has not answered all the questions it has at least thrown light on the problems of translating sometimes complex ideas into a limited piece of canvas or board.
I retreated from outside observation,after initially working from the landscape, there was just too much information available. I needed to distance myself from source material and in the studio found a new way of working with the images I had laid down over many years. I was able to process selected ideas through use of new materials, that helped to move my practice to where I felt I was able to develop as a painter and print maker.
Living on the East Anglian coast I was already familiar with the depredations of water on fragile land and it became the subject of early work, but later in the studio it became the interference of human activity on fragile places that demanded my attention.
Colour has become a primary tool for me in these more recent paintings. I hope to exploit its ambiguity of interpretation, so dependant on personal experiences and connections.
Human presence that has been absent in my work now is feeling necessary. There is no Message, overt or obvious to the viewer, only a dialogue with myself ongoing and never resolved , I believe that the work must stand for itself.
Seven Will works and lives between the wild heaths, coast and meandering estuaries of the Suffolk Coast. A connection to and an immersion in nature informs all of his practice.
Locally dug beach clays, Coraline crag (a kind of sandstone unique to the area), fossils, wood ash and especially plants find their way into or onto Steven ceramics and printmaking. Steven takes an experimental approach to his work and loves to develop and discover new processes.
Originally trained in botany, Steven discovered ceramics after many years as a market gardener, initially as something to do in the quiet winter season. Art foundation and a distinction from the CityLit Ceramics Diploma followed and he set up a studio near Orford in Suffolk 10 years ago, where he is still based.
