15 Jun Flowers Gallery Summer Exhibition “Hidden U.K, Hidden Ireland”
A show comprising of 25 British and Irish Artists taking place at Flowers Gallery curated by Sean Scully
13th July – 3rd September 2022
Curated by Sean Scully
82 Kingsland Road, London, E2 8DP
I am delighted to announce that I have been included in Flowers Gallery Summer Exhibition which is taking place at their Kingsland Road Gallery in London from July until the end of August. The show is being curated by Sean Scully RA and will incorporate a combination of some of the most exciting artists and makers from the United Kingdom and Ireland, all the artists being material based and making art with their hands.
Sean Scully is to me one of the greatest exponents of colour in the colossus that abstraction is. My early art experiences are based around looking at his work, visiting shows he was part of during the 90s and the very early turn of the 21st Century across Europe, travelling to cities such as Strasbourg, Munich and other great places to see up close how he manipulates the canvas he works on. The journey we undertook as graduates was so important at the time as after finishing university, I think most would agree that you do in fact need a break from applying yourself as an artist and instead use the time to absorb more of what you have been trying to understand over that last 3 years and just enjoy the art.
As much as I think Scully helped define the emotional and geometric in abstract art, the work to me has always represented so much about place and time, when I travelled Europe to see some of his paintings, the vivid colours from great cities such as Venice really came across in the painting. With art, I have always found it’s what you can glean from the experience of viewing and in return what the artist is presenting you to view needs to convey a message. Scully’s work has always delivered on this promise for me, this is why I was so excited when he got in touch originally and asked to see a selection of the works I had on offer in the studio at present which he could acquire.
As I write this post, I have just finished curating a selection of 8 paintings that I am sending off to Flowers Gallery to be curated by Sean himself, I have looked at some of the more recent work which concern themselves with the seasons change across the coastal paths in Sussex, places such as East Hill in Hastings during a raging storm as you stare across the channel slowly absorbing the change in colours as the hues of blue turn purple and then to a raging crimson, the sweet meadows surrounding The Long Man and the fields of Wilmington, the slow hum of the season changing gear, the chalk fields and the green exposed to sunlight. Maybe I am trying to convey this to the viewer, a happier place which has been used over the centuries for habitation by everyone from the Celts and the Romans, to the farmers and village folk you see now. Stories etched into the earth with fragments of metals and stone left behind.
You can see a selection of my work alongside 25 British and Irish artists chosen and curated by Sean Scully all summer.
Hidden UK, Hidden Ireland.
13th July-3rd September, Flowers Gallery, Kingsland Road, London.
