Sacred Meetings and Near Thursbitch

Sacred Meetings - paintings by Greg Tricker is at Marylebone Theatre until 3 June 2023. Sacred Meetings is an exhibition of the work of Greg Tricker. Greg is a stone carver and painter. He was born in London in 1951. Deeply inspired by Vincent Van Gogh in the early years, he later developed his own unique style of painting on the Isles of Sicily. He trained as a monumental mason and now lives in the Cotswolds and teachers at the Ruskin Mill Centre.

His profound and simple style of paintings follows in the mystical and sacred tradition of art akin to the work of Rouault and Cecil Collins. Qualities of myth, echoes of the Folk Art Spirit and element of the circus feature in his work, which he presents in themes; he has produced a number of themed exhibitions, notably Paintings for Anne Frank (exhibited at Peterborough Cathedral and St Clement Danes, London), The Catacombs and recently Francis of Assisi exhibited at Salisbury Cathedral and Piano Nobile Gallery, London.

Peter S. Smith RE, wood engraver, was drawn to Jenkin Chapel near Thursbitch, high in the hills of the Peak District, by the story of a curious memorial stone, and that stone is the subject of a new booklet Near Thursbitch. Peter tells his story and shows his boxwood engraving of the stone, an oblique tale and an oblique engraving. It is shown as the centre of the trifold, the text from the two faces of the stone holding his engraving, in their grip.

Near Thursbitch has been published by Incline Press, which celebrates 30 years of printing books and ephemera in November 2023. Proprietor, printer and binder Graham Moss, has published over 120 limited edition books in traditional private press fashion. A true craftsman, he carefully chooses the metal type, paper and binding for each of them, creating a beautiful collection of sought-after work. 

Near Thursbitch is set in 16 point type, designed by the calligrapher Alfred Fairbank in 1929; the cut lettering is represented by Russell Maret’s Baker, issued in 2016, also used as the titling fount. The wood type on the cover is from Stephenson Blake. Printed on 170gsm Zerkall paper, hand sewn with linen thread into a cover made by Papeterie St-Armand in Montreal. The edition is of 160 numbered copies, £36 including UK postage. Each copy is signed by the author/engraver.

Peter S. Smith RE, former head of the school of Art, Design and Media at Kingston college, is a member of the Society of Wood Engravers, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers. He has paintings and prints in public and private collections including Tate Britain, the Ashmolean, the Fitzwilliam and the British Museum. In September 2006 Piquant Editions published a book about his printmaking ‘The Way I See It’ with an introductory essay by Calvin Seerveld. He currently has a studio at the St. Bride Foundation, London, where he also teaches wood engraving workshops.

Peter currently has work in the RE Originals exhibition at the Bankside Gallery and will have a piece in the RA Summer Exhibition.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bruce Cockburn - O Sun By Day, O Moon By Night.

The Small House and more ...

The Small House - Art Installation by Richard Woods

Southwark Cathedral has commissioned a major art installation, entitled The Small House, by the artist Richard Woods. Richard’s work appears across the UK and at various sites globally.

“The Small House is a simplified facsimile of a normal terraced house. It is a 2D cartoon depiction of a terraced house, the architecture of everyday. Standing at 7.5 metres tall and positioned directly in front of the magnificent Great Screen of Southwark Cathedral, The Small House aims to spark up a conversation with the transcendental architecture of the Cathedral. I see it as a meeting of the architecture of the everyday and the grandeur of the Gothic architecture that is something beyond the everyday,” said Richard.

The Dean of Southwark, the Very Revd Andrew Nunn, said, “Ask a child to draw a house and they will probably draw something that is similar to the house that all of us have drawn. Our images of a house are iconic. But whilst we will draw such a house few of us live as comfortably, with a smoking chimney, a picket fence, outside space and roses round the door. ‘The Small House’ invites us to think about our concept and fantasy of house and home and to ask the serious questions about why so many live in sub-standard housing or on the street. Richard Woods’ ‘The Small House’ sits in the big house, the house of God, iconic in its own right – the abiding with us God, who opens the door of the divine house and invites us in to find a home.”

Opening times are 9am – 5pm daily and The Small House is on display from Saturday 6 August through to Wednesday 31 August. Admission is free.

Summer at Bankside Gallery has original artworks by contemporary painters and printmakers of the Royal Watercolour Society and Royal Society of Painter Printmakers. Check out Anne Marlow with Two by Two and Arks and Rainbows, Raphael Appignanesi with Babel (with Thunderword from Finnegans Wake, and Peter S. Smith with St Bride's from Bankside.

Also check out Zi Ling, who is among the Winners | Award Winning Artists 2020-2022 at Mall Galleries with her HRH Princess Margaret, In the Middle of Pink is the Burning Silence.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ricky Ross - Bethlehem's Gate.

Peter S. Smith, The Dalziel Woodpeckers, and Hans Rookmaaker

Peter S. Smith is currently showing work in RE Original Prints 2022 at the Bankside Gallery and also has a print called ‘Dalziel’s Apprentice’ in an interesting exhibition in the Print Room at the British Museum.

This intriguing new display, The woodpecking factory: Victorian illustrations by the Brothers Dalziel, highlights over 50 works engraved on wood by the Brothers Dalziel firm, illustrating literary and commercial work published throughout the Victorian period. Established in 1839, the Brothers Dalziel (one of whom was a sister – Margaret – a talented senior engraver) became the most successful wood-engraving company in Britain, employing dozens of engravers.

The Brothers Dalziel had enormous cultural power in Victorian Britain, shaping the way people visualised art, goods and ideas. Mostly the engravers made images after designs by draughtspeople, including major artists such as Frederic Leighton and John Everett Millais, and it's these artists who were widely credited and remembered. However, the process was collaborative and the skill of the craftspeople (affectionately known as 'woodpeckers') who engraved such illustrations was considerable.

‘Dalziel’s Apprentice’ is Peter's homage to those Victorian trade engravers and their apprentices who had to cut away all that white in order to make their prints emulate black pen and ink drawings!

Additionally, ‘The Big Picture’ magazine has a section about Hans Rookmaaker and asked Peter to write about him focusing on one specific aspect of his work. In his article Peter has focused on Rookmaaker's use of the term ‘Modern Art’ in the book Modern Art and the Death of a Culture. For more of Peter's reflections on the work of Rookmaaker see here and here.

In his article, Peter refers to Sixten Ringbom's The Sounding Cosmos. A Study in the Spiritualism of Kandinsky and the Genesis of Abstract Painting, a work on the mystical and theosophical themes in modern art. He argues that spiritual elements in modern art have been hidden in plain sight "because many of the institutional guardians of Modernism chose to overlook it" citing Waldemar Januszczak, who argued, in a 2021 article, "that the art historians and institutions of Modernism repeatedly ignored any idea that in Modernism there can be found religious or hermetic intentions" because of "a fear that it would sully the waters."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sarah Brown - I'm On My Way.

Peter S. Smith at Bankside Gallery & Kevis House Gallery

Peter S Smith is a Painter/Printmaker with a studio at the St Bride Foundation in London. He studied Fine Art at Birmingham Polytechnic and Art Education at Manchester. In 1992 he gained an MA (Printmaking) at Wimbledon School of Art. Examples of his work can be found in private and public collections including Tate Britain and the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. His book 'The Way See It' (Piquant Press) is a visual monograph of contemporary work by a professional artist who is a Christian, which provides an illustrated introduction to the art of engraving.

Peter's work can be seen in two exhibitions. The first, Print REbels, is at Bankside Gallery until 13 May. This exhibition celebrates the 200th anniversary of the birth of the founder and first President of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, Francis Seymour Haden. Prints by Haden and those who inspired him including Rembrandt and Durer are included, along with works by his contemporaries including Samuel Palmer and J.A.M. Whistler; members of the Royal Academy who were closely associated with the RE and current members of the RE responding directly to their Society's heritage. These current members have created a portfolio of new prints inspired by a past or present member.
Peter has chosen to honour Geoffrey Wales.

Wood engravings by Anne Desmet and Friends at Kevis House Gallery is a collection of new and recent works on paper by Neil Bousfield, Anne Desmet, Edwina Ellis, ​Peter Lawrence, Peter S Smith and Roy Willingham from 5 May - 23 June.

Anne Desmet says: "I am delighted to have been invited to curate this exhibition of contemporary wood engravings for Kevis House Gallery. I have chosen to focus on the works of six established artists in the belief that the opportunity to see a collection of works by each one will shed the particular light and offer the specific insights into each artist's abiding themes that one normally only gains via a solo show. I also hope the exhibition will demonstrate the shared concerns that create lively relationships between the work of all six of us.

I have known the wood engravings of each of these fine artists for years. Technically, they are all expert practitioners of the art yet, in addition, each brings something refreshingly unusual and innovative to this wonderful historic medium. From the most highly topographical and figurative to the most abstract, from editioned print to experimental engraved collage, from single-lock black-and-white print to multiple, overlaid, colour blocks, there are shared concerns and rhythms that link all our works and throw up interesting connections between them."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Duke Special - Condition.

Restoration engraving in Bankside exhibition

An engraving by Peter S. Smith which was commissioned for St John's Leytonstone to celebrate the completion of major restoration works to the church can be seen in the forthcoming Society of Wood Engravers exhibition at the Bankside Gallery from 27th January to 9th February.

The Society of Wood Engravers exists to promote wood engraving. It is the principal organisation and rallying point for those interested in the subject; it also maintains a lively interest in other forms of relief printmaking. Essentially, it is an artists' exhibiting society. There are around seventy members, practising artists who have been elected or invited to membership on merit.

Simon Brett has written that Peter S. Smith was:

"among a group of like-minded young artists who sat at the feet of the Dutch Calvinist art historian Hans Rookmaaker. Rookmaaker (1922-77), himself part of Francis Schaeffer's evangelical L'Abri movement, brought a deep understanding of contemporary art to bear on what a Christian might do in what then seemed like cultural end-times."

Brett writes that Smith "has always been one of the few artists to use wood engraving for a truly personal and genuinely contemporary vision, untrammelled by even the best conventions of the medium."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Iona - Let Your Glory Fall.