Sneak peek at summer exhibition open day at Newbury's Arlington Arts
ARLINGTON Arts, at Mary Hare School, Snelsmore, is inviting visitors to an open day for their summer exhibition From Colour To Calm, by local artists Geoff Wond and Isobel Pigott. It will be open from 11am to 4pm on Sunday (July24). Entrance is free and tea, coffee and other light refreshments will be available.
From Colour to Calm:
Paintings by Isobel Pigott and Geoff Wond,
plus ceramics by Sally Bettridge
at Arlington Arts, Snelsmore
until September 26
Review by LIN WILKINSON
Two painters, with very different stylistic approaches, are currently showing work at Arlington Arts.
Isobel Pigott worked as a garden designer for 20 years, a creative move many fine artists make. Here working in various media – acrylic, paper, oil, watercolour and pastels ̶ her work shows a Matisse-ian joy in colour and pattern.
Her strongest and most satisfying work consists of bold, fluid, expressive paintings and cut-outs, all wrought in exuberant colour. Reclining Nude with Headdress and Reclining Nude with Sunflowers also bring Gauguin to mind, in the compositional positioning, and the physical features and languor of the figures.
In the pleasing mixed-media Still Life with Dahlias, which contains some text elements, the technique is tighter, the colour more saturated and the forms more controlled. The angled viewpoint with some compositional flatness increases the impact of the work.
In her cut-outs, Pigott has formed composite images, sometimes fitting painted cut elements together like a jigsaw, in other works placing them on top of background colour. The forms have been simplified, with linear elements and flat areas of colour important to the compositions. Conversations, with superimposed text, concerns loss; in The Artist’s Kitchen the forms have become stylised.
Procession of Pots is a joyful tumble of elements – pots, basket and fruit ̶- in vibrant colour. Jingle, Jangle, Jungle, Heligan, with some drawn motifs, is voluptuous in its sensuous colour and bold forms.
Pigott’s more conventionally figurative work includes Cornish seascapes, some veering towards abstracted forms, others semi-naïve in style, and pastel works inspired by her corner of Berkshire.
Geoff Wond shows watercolour landscapes of wild places, which stem from initial pencil sketches done in the field. His work is basically figurative, but he works with a wet-in-wet technique, so the inchoate qualities of watercolour are exaggerated, moving a lot of the paintings towards varying degrees of abstraction. This technique creates very atmospheric images, seemingly unfixed, like the weather: amorphous, dreamy and mysterious. The end result can be unpredictable, always an exciting place for an artist to be.
Distant Blue and Pine Reflections Blue 1 are almost entirely abstracted, so the viewer 'feels' as much as sees the landscape. In a series of three beautifully composed works, the barn in each is figuratively delineated; the empty, surrounding landscape semi-abstracted.
Autumn Colours combines a pleasing colour balance, fluid watercolour and more linear elements. In Herring Smoke House 1 Bornholm, in an enjoyably limited, subfusc palette, soft washes of watercolour contrast with the geometrical space of the smoke-house.
Also in the foyer, Sally Bettridge has two showcases of appealing domestic ceramics: bowls and platters, mugs and jugs. They are all wheel-thrown, with expressive coloured slip decoration.
The exhibition is open Monday to Friday, 10am-4.30pm.
