Visual Arts Reviews 2007

Burbage Art Group - 10th Anniversary Exhibition

'Farm worker' by Rachel Slaney (pen and ink)

The Burbage Art Group meets every Wednesday evening from 7.15 - 9.15 during term time, and although I live there I was not aware of the amount of talent there is in the vicinity!

The Art Exhibition on Saturday included an impressive range of subject matter - everything from fantasy to very detailed studies of animals, birds and plants. The range of medium was also wide, pastels, oils, acrylics, watercolour, pen and ink, clay and collage. Children attending were encouraged to fill in an activity sheet which enabled them to really get involved and appreciate the work on show.

The oldest member is 91 and the youngest 12 and the ethos is one of encouragement for all so that members gain confidence with support from Rachel Slaney. Rachel's work was also on show - a beautiful collection of very detailed work.

Stephanie Osborne's studies of poppies were a treat - ranging from small, intimately observed detail to a large collage. Jean Tym's paintings of birds were excellent, and I particularly liked her picture of an old Essex barge - which took me back to my roots and which was realistic and evocative. However, Laura Critchlow's range of paintings were outstanding - wonderfully detailed studies of animals and birds - the Head of an Eagle was the picture of the show for me.

Of course, picking out individuals is very subjective, and I have to emphasise how impressed I was with the breadth and depth of the work I saw today. As one local said "I'm really pleased that I didn't miss it"

So am I!

Angela Crawford

Duncan Pass - Travelling Through Landscape

Duncan Pass, Mam Tor

Duncan Pass celebrates the Peak District in this exhibition of beautiful paintings. They are done in oils which give them a vibrancy of colour, but they resemble ink drawings in the fineness of the brush strokes especially in the carefully observed vegetation - the grasses, the brambles, the heathers. This quality perhaps reflects Duncan's training as an illustrator.

The skies are wide and full of stunning cloudscapes which evoke the ever-changing weather, and the seasonal and daily variations in light. And the effects of these changes on the landscape are wonderfully captured in the shapes, colours and shadows of the rock formations, moors, fields and standing water.

There are people in these paintings but they are dwarfed by the majesty of their surroundings. This is a true reflection of the feelings of awe experienced by walkers in the Peak District - and equally experienced by viewers of this exhibition.

Barbara Wilson

Laleesh Fine Art & Ingrid Karlsson-Kemp - Finding the Thread

Rock of my Life

There was more than one thread to be discovered in this beguiling exhibition mounted jointly by Ingrid Karlsson-Kemp and Rebecca Clitheroe. The most obvious were in some of the materials used: fabric, thread, wool, and slender wire. And there was much to be admired on a surface level in the sewn, crocheted, knitted and delicately strung-together work that these materials inspired.

Closer inspection revealed many objects such as one might find lurking forgotten in some drawer: family photographs, buttons, beads from a broken necklace, scraps of old letters. There was an invisible link to be found, a story to follow. Clearly there was an autobiographical element in these narratives but there was a strong connection to the way all of us tell our stories: how we weave together bits and pieces to create a whole, how at different times in our lives we can unravel it all and create a different whole.

For me, this was a very feminine exhibition. A further thread to be followed was that between generations of women. Again, this could be taken at the literal level of the passing on of ancient crafts and practical measures: saving buttons, unpicking seams, recycling materials. But more profoundly it was about bringing it all together, creating the fabric of our lives.

Barbara Wilson

High Peak Artists' & Craft Workers' Association - Pump Room Art & Craft Exhibition

Smoke Fired Pots by Andy Phillips

There is always such a wealth of art and craft forms at the Pump Room that it is difficult to do it justice in a single review. So I hope the comments given below are enough to entice you to experience the exhibition in full.

Work in textiles has a particular appeal for me and there is a good range of knitted, embroidered and sewn pieces. The patchwork of Kate Aimson caught my eye with its myriad impressions all built on a basic tiny hexagonal form: from the subtle shadings of 'Midnight' to the unified wildness of 'Hedgerow'.

There are several jewellers exhibiting and I'd be pleased to wear pendants or earrings made by any of them. I was especially drawn by Sally Bristow's work. Sally heats layers of glass of different shades and textures till they fuse together; this process produces unique pieces with beautiful translucent colours.

The work of the ceramic artists is strikingly different. At one end of the range is Ian Johnson's hand-painted bone china with its bold colours - my favourite items are the highly contrasting 'jazzy' range. At the other end, is Caroline Chouler's perennially delightful mosaics featuring delicate shapes and colours, and Maddy Hawkes' stone-fired hand-built pieces in soft shades of green and turquoise.

The range of paintings is even greater in subject matter and technique: from the large, bold portraits of guest artist Stephen Ashurst, to the atmospheric work of Sandra Orme depicting Peak District landscapes as they respond to the constantly changing weather.

This is only a very small selection. There are nearly 40 artists exhibiting in all and much more high quality work to be appreciated.

Barbara Wilson

Alan Bailey - Paintings of the Peak District

Alan Bailey - Wild Moor, watercolour

It is usually the case that once artists have established their style their subsequent output remains very much the same. For Example a visit to the Royal.Academy Summer Exhibition will confirm that most Academicians' work is instantly recognisable as being the same every year. Not so Alan Bailey as this year's exhibition on the Fringe makes clear.

Anyone who thought they could identify a Bailey landscape as being in the style he settled into some years ago will be surprised at how in his later work he has developed a new and exciting form. The Peak District landscape is still the subject of most of his work but now reality has given way to an element of neo-impressionism which adds an extra dimension to the pictures. Where previously we saw the countryside now we are given a feeling of what it is like to be actually in that landscape and experience the atmosphere of the Peak in all its changeable weather. Quite a notable achievement.

But in addition Alan also displays sculpture based on pieces of wood salvaged from his garden. Where we would merely see a chunk of firewood Alan has spotted a fish, human torso or just a pleasing shape

Alan has produced a fine representative display of his work and the short journey to 134 Green Lane is very much worth while. Parking is usually no problem.

The Exhibition continues during the Fringe and is open from 6-8, 13 -15 and 20-22 July from 11.00am to 5.00pm

Carola Colley - Following The Line

Carola Colley, Shifting Shorelines

'My work is about the journey'. Carola Colley's introduction to her exhibition catalogue is tantalisingly vague, but with the show itself entitled Following the Line it is perhaps not too presumptuous to assume that the viewer's own journey is at least part of her meaning - certainly there are many lines to follow whether it is the disappearing tracks to the coast in Into the Sea or the horizontal lines of the aqua-marine sea contrasted with the vertical paintwork of the sky in Lambhill, Ramsey Bay.

Colley's landscapes, often displayed on square canvases as if in defiance of the notion that a landscape has to be 'Landscape', are curious affairs where land and sea are pared down to their essential shapes - or indeed lines. Sometimes, as in the Mingled Sea Scape series, the image has become virtually abstract. Other works are more naturalistic, but often with a twist - the sky in Shifting Shorelines II looks more fluid than the water.

These last are oils and there is a greater predominance of this medium than the museum's own write-up with its talk of her 'broad spectrum of media' would lead you to expect. That said, the few mixed media works are some of her most successful. Very different from the landscapes, her series of three Cross Sections using clay and ceramics, depict leaf shapes and intriguing symbols of growth against a pure white background. There are also some interiors, which, though in oil, have a completely different feel, being vigorously executed in hot, tropical colours.

The visitors' book shows a somewhat 'Marmite' response to Colley's work so prepare to love her or hate her. Personally I found my approval ebbing and flowing like the sea she depicts - I love the dribble of oil creating fissures and inlets in Creeping Tide, but the flat slabs of dung-coloured paint on Beyond and Yet Further left me cold.

Like the remarkable Derbyshire Open also in the Museum, this is a free exhibition so why not make your own journey of appreciation and, if you are a budding artist, find some inspiration for your own creative efforts at the same time?

Stephanie Billen

Buxton Museum and Art Gallery - The Derbyshire Open 2007

Clare Yarrington, Silver Shafted Moon, Winner, Derbyshire Open 2006

A real highlight of the Museum and Art Gallery's calendar, the Derbyshire Open is celebrating its 25th show with a spectacular exhibition that easily measures up to the impressive standards it has set itself over the years

Each year the competition invites amateur and professional artists to submit entries capturing aspects of life and landscape in Derbyshire. This year 376 entries were considered and 109 hung including 31 lively works from young people. Ten works have been awarded prizes with a further ten being commended but visitors will doubtless find other favourites since the overall quality is extremely high.

The winner of the coveted Derbyshire Trophy is Overexposed by Rod Holt, a finely detailed pen and watercolour pencil picture of the plane wreckage at Bleaklow, an unusual subject superbly executed. Indeed, the museum attendant actually offered me a magnifying glass to appreciate its finer details. Other winning entries include Dianne Elsworth's Exhibit E, a work in which the natural world has been reduced to a series of test-tubes including one labelled 'fresh air', Nicola Foote's beautiful oil portrait, Worn Out, Tony Deeming's View from Tissington Trail (a very different use of watercolour) and Caroline Chouler-Tissier's Memories of Lightwood Reservoir in which a column of ceramic tiles cleverly depicts the textures and changing geography of Buxton's local reservoir, now more of a pond.

It is always exciting to see some of the younger talents with highlights including Marleigh Degnan-Brown's Hide and Seek in Bluebell Woods (some arrestingly disembodied heads there) and five-year-old Jonah Pakpahan's Ducks in Chapel-en-le-Frith (he'd obviously really observed their movements). Sam Wildegoose's Derbyshire Ram watercolour is extremely eye-catching and it is no surprise to see he has picked up the Council's Young Artist Prize with another crisp and airy work, Stanage Edge - definitely a name to watch.

As ever, it is the variety as well as the quality that impresses. Derbyshire seems pretty grey as I write but G Slater's Jessie's Garden captures a summer's day that seems literally red hot. T Dickinson has produced two eerie works, Nocturnal Departure and Midnight Presence, both featuring houses with black and white chequered floors and both so full of atmosphere that I felt as if I had fallen into somebody else's dream. Everywhere you look there are surprises, from the leaves that turn out to be birds in S Fox's Goldfinches to the semi-naked woman in A Currell's Cricket at Baslow.

Derbyshire has been evoked in landscapes and in daring collage such as The Discussion, a red and blue Buxton street scene by last year's Fringe award-winning artist Robert Wilson. Portrait too is represented with M Silson's charcoal Derbyshire Girl capturing both the subject's movement and seemingly her thought processes.

Impossible to summarise, the Derbyshire Open repays several visits - especially as it is free! And take the children - this year there is a friendly quiz to keep them busy.

Stephanie Billen