Andrew Lansley ‘Instinct & Abstraction’ 29th August – 26th September 2020

“In many walks of life, one is asked to work by a process of deduction getting towards a fixed predetermined point. However, in the creative process of making art, the reverse is often true. I share this way of working with the other artists present in this exhibition.

Throughout my childhood and in much of my teaching career, the response I got towards artwork from many people was a simple question: ‘What’s it about?’ My answer was always the same: ‘It’s just a picture’. To me a picture shouldn’t need any explanation or equivocation. It is its own language. It’s like a dream. It touches parts of you that a words cannot touch. It comes from a place that words find inaccessible.

There are no rules as to what can or cannot be in a piece of art. The only thing that must be said is that it must provide evidence of instinct and it will speak to the instinct of the sensitive viewer if that is where it has come from.”

Andrew Lansley August 2020

Malcolm Ashman

Born in Bath, Somerset in 1957, Malcolm is a multi-disciplinary artist working in painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, sculpture and textiles.

“These ‘small heads’ are a thread running alongside a series of large drawings I’m making based on ‘The Tempest’ by William Shakespeare. I imagined them as the comic relief set against the darker drama of the play. They are not based on any particular characters rather they are players in search of roles.”

Stewart Geddes PPRWA

“I’m interested in the act of painting itself; the way paint behaves and how its abundant material properties – wetness, transparency, grittiness and smoothness, abrupt transitions and incremental ones, quiet and loud moments, and so on – have the potential to communicate directly.”

Howard Jeffs

“This selection of prints represents my interest in producing work by a method that I have been using for the past number of years in Printmaking.

This technique etched lino has allowed me to make my prints using fluid painterly marks rather than cutting the linoblock with lino cutting tools. As a painter I wanted my printmaking to represent something of the fluidity of paint.

The prints use strong dramatic colours and shapes that are created by pouring bitumen paint onto a lino block and then etching it with caustic soda to create a print. They are all abstract in conception and refer to the natural shapes found in nature.

I have also included in this group of prints earlier work based on using the circular form and these prints are unique (not editioned) and are all monotypes.”

Sarah Purvey

“The vessel is my carrier, it maps my journey, it carries thoughts and ideas, revealing and concealing glimpses of self during the making process.

The vessel has become autobiographical, spiritual, a place for me to hide in plain sight.

I work predominantly in clay and on paper and explore an intensely physical relationship with drawing throughout my practice. The ceramic vessel acts as a metaphor for the human form and is tasked to carry and map the journey through my personal and emotional landscape resulting in work which conveys an instinctive and visceral energy.”