Join us upstairs at The Art Shop for a drink and the viewing of this joyful exhibition of paintings, drawings & ceramics on SATURDAY 30 APRIL  2-4pm

Catherine Baker and Barry Stedman share a common language of mark-making and a sourcing of the local landscape for their ideas.

CATHERINE BAKER – ‘An immersion in landscape has always been the starting point for my work. On my walks I make sketches and notes of observations and feelings of that particular day. Back in the studio, the sketches are my ‘aides memoires’ I use to fire up the painting process. My intention then is to explore the possibilities of abstract painting, to play with composition, mark-making and colour juxtaposition, to simplify and refine down. Once in the flow of painting, a recognition of a memory begins to take shape, and I will go with that and see where it takes me. The shapes that emerge are abstract, but personal to me, characters that I come to know and have an affinity with.’

Catherine studied in London at Kingston Polytechnic (1979-82) and gained her postgraduate diploma at the Royal Academy Schools (1992-5). She has exhibited her work both in the UK and abroad, including the Burlington Gallery, Mall Galleries and the RA Summer Show in London.

BARRY STEDMAN – ‘With the vessels of Barry Stedman there is a passionate connection to landscape. These vessels connect to a long tradition of art made in direct, almost bodily response to the weather. I think of Constable lying on his back on Hampstead Heath painting his cloudscapes, obsessively recording the procession of shadows above him. I think of Peter Lanyon in the 1950s in his glider feeling the pressure of the Cornish winds, painting his iconic images of the air. Barry paints and draws, setting off in the rain with his sketchbooks. And here with these vessels that have been thrown then cut open and altered, scored and handled, we feel the tension between areas of intense marking and areas of openness, energetic dribbles and splashes counterpointed with voids, poolings and washes of colour. Above all with Barry’s work there is the wonderful drama between slowness and speed, the feeling that there are places of lyrical flow and places of almost cussed work. Samuel Beckett, writing of his friend the painter Avigdor Arikha, captured this ebb and flow: ‘By the hand it unceasingly changes the eye unceasingly changed…Truce for a space and the marks of what it is to be and be in face of. These deep marks show.’ – ‘Shadowlands’ a text by Edmund de Waal

Barry completed a Ceramics degree at the University of Westminster in 2009 where he received the Caparo Award, joining Edmund de Waal’s studio that same year. His work has been featured in numerous exhibitions and galleries across the UK and internationally.

Arts Council of Wales Collectorplan scheme available. More details via the link below.

For more information or to see more work by the artists, contact us on 01873 852690   admin@artshopandchapel.co.uk