Essex is celebrating its fourth Summer of Art this year. Artists are exhibiting their work on art trails and open studios in the county's rural, coastal and urban settings, showcasing the county's artistic talent. This weekend it is the Parndon Mill and Roydon Open Studios.
I began by visiting the studios of Alan Burgess and Angela Godfrey at Roydon. Alan Burgess spoke about his increased admiration for trees which has resulted in a recent major painting project "Great British Trees." Angela Godfrey works in an organic style with natural materials and environmental themes and has undertaken numerous significant church commissions. Angela showed me designs, models and photographs from several of these commissions. Her work can also be seen at St Peter-ad-Vincula Roydon where both the altar and a carved memorial are her work and feature in the Barking Episcopal Area Art Trail.
Work by Burgess and Godfrey also features in Structure, the current exhibition in the Gallery at Parndon Mill. Structure demonstrates how artists can be inspired by structure, how they depict it and how they work with designers, architects and engineers to create constructions. Angela had already spoken of her collaborations with craftspeople as had occurred with the model Dove exhibited here which had been created in stainless steel for Carryduff Catholic church in Belfast. Inspired by natural structures, Godfrey has also displayed a stunning sculpture based on a tiny piece of animal skull.
Among the artists whose work I particularly enjoyed in the Structure and Project Space exhibitions and their open studios were Anthony de Jong Cleyndert and Liz Boast. Churches and crosses feature among the vibrant semi-abstract expressionism of Cleyndert's paintings. Last year he created a new specially commissioned glass panel for the Windhill Churches Centre in Bishops Stortford. Liz Boast showed me work based on confessional boxes which also double as Punch and Judy booths. There is a clear dialectic element to Boast's often surrealistic work - "a dialogue with ... lifes idiosyncracies." She spoke about the sense of evil within each of us that is expressed through Mr Punch and which needs some form of safe expression.
Finally, I visited the Gibberd Garden created by Sir Frederick Gibberd, the planner of Harlow New Town, who designed the garden and filled the grounds with sculptures, ceramic pots and architectural salvage from 1972 till his death in 1984. In Sir Frederick's own words: 'Garden design is an art of space, like architecture and town design. The space, to be a recognisable design, must be contained and the plants and walls containing it then become parts of adjacent spaces. The garden has thus become a series of rooms, each with its own character, from small intimate spaces to large enclosed prospects.' Unlike the choices made for Harlow New Town where the quality and quantity of work have led to the designation of Sculpture Town, the sculptures in the Gibberd Garden seem predominantly minor work.
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Deacon Blue - Your Town.
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