‘Celebration and Compassion’, the winter exhibition at
Chappel Galleries, features work by Alex Debenham, Andrew Gadd, Claire Cansick, David Stone, Francis Hoyland, Frances Mann, Graham Giles, Ian Poulton, John Maddison, Jonathan Clarke, Julie Giles, Mary Griffiths, Michael Fell, Paul Rumsey, Peter Campbell, Peter Kelly, Peter Rodulfo, and Tom Deakins. The exhibition mixes a range of religious imagery with depictions of churches or cathedrals. It includes a liturgical banner designed by Tom and Sylvia Deakins that St. Mary’s Church, Dunmow, has lent.
In 2008, a specially commissioned painting of the nativity by
Andrew Gadd, set in a freezing bus shelter, was displayed in bus shelters across the UK. That painting depicted the holy family, with halos, in a dark bus shelter. The shepherds and wise men were replaced with fellow passengers waiting for a bus. Some were watching the nativity intently; others appeared oblivious and were checking the bus timetable and flagging down a bus. In a similar vein, Gadd’s images in ‘Celebration and Compassion’ – ‘Fairground Crucifixion’ and ‘Underground Jesus Study’ – also set Christ compellingly within contemporary contexts.
Jeremy Theophilis writes of
Peter Campbell: "Whilst his images seem easy to the eye, and they are indeed a tribute to the obvious joy he took in manipulating paint on canvas, there is beneath the surface a constant questioning and exploring of relationships. These can be between mankind and nature (farmworkers, gardeners), mankind and its mythology (deities and nymphs), male and female, old age and youth, or even the continuous relationship between the landscape and the seasons."
Nick Stone writes of
Clare Cansick: "Nature is her primary subject, with an emphasis on beauty and power of elemental forces; her focus has been primarily on water in its reflective capacity, but also the earth and the growing environment, air, and the play of light and dark within skies and cloud, and more recently the power of fire. One theme that runs through a lot of her paintings is the latency of memory; the diffusion the experience of growing up and living in these watery landscapes with expansive skies."
Tom Deakins writes: "inspiration starts with a sense of place and as another East Anglian artist once said, ‘I should paint my own places best.’ I have returned to subjects that I feel a deep affinity with. Over time, through changing moods and seasons this familiarity has become deeply ingrained."
Michael Fell "drew, painted, and made prints continuously, chronicling the people, cities, towns, and nature around him in a large and varied output."
Antony Eyton writes of
Frances Mann, Graham and Julie Giles: Frances Mann paints "small vivid pictures, in her own words “chasing a moment when a piece of colour or a thrilling spatial arrangement in a particular light seem like something I don’t want to forget”. The result is poetic, whether it be washing on a line from a glimpse or from memory the rising moon in a landscape. There is a beguiling simplicity and rightness of composition she shares with her husband Sargy."
"Graham Giles is a painter to his finger tips. He embraces landscape in a physical way, feeling its rhythms and presence. He empathises with water, trees or rocks, the way he paints expressive and in tune with his feelings."
Julie Giles is also a landscape painter. "She hits a note with perfect pitch. She has painted a lot in watercolour which has had a liberating effect, giving her oils a fine transparency. Both painters have a high intelligence and this shows in the intensity of their expression. In Julie’s case she wants to incorporate figures. It’s as if she likes both Bonnard and Breughal. She needs the flitting of figures on beach or amongst the trees as much as she needs solitude in a landscape pure and simple."
Mary Griffiths writes: "I'd be so pleased if these portraits were seen as a homage to our best instincts which is to value life in it's infinite variety and intrinsic worth. For me, irrespective of whatever else one's bent on expressing,the act of painting with it's deep and boundless pleasures, conjoins us with the perpetual flow of humankind at it's venerative best,exclaiming it's"transcendent wonder" and ineffable joy in being alive. Or as my mother once put it succinctly "it's your way of saying hallelujah"."
Francis Hoyland writes that each print in his series of Ninety One Etchings on The Life of Christ "had a religiously inspired meditation on the subject and an account of something that had recently happened to me. In this way I hoped to show some relation between interior meditation and everyday events."
James Steward writes that
Peter Rodulfo’s "work inhabits the world between what we know and what we dream, treading a line between reality and imagination. They evoke a kind of instability, a sense that change, like the end to a long British Winter, is the only constant. They are both alien and a form of shorthand in the form of gestures that refer to shared experience that reveal a mesmerising creative world."
David Buckman writes of the the storehouse of inspirations which have fed
Paul Rumsey's work over several decades: "That storehouse is packed from floor to ceiling with an enormous collection of books, pictures, films and events ranging from the outwardly mundane to the bizarre, fantastic and grotesque." He hopes that people will come to "more readily appreciate the work of a unique artist such as Rumsey who has, as Blake put it, “that greatest of all blessings, a strong imagination, a clear idea, and a determinate vision of things in his own mind.”"
Past exhibitions including religious work at the Gallery have included
Colin Moss' '
Paintings, Religious & Profane': "Once his teaching duties at Ipswich Art School were finished for the day, Colin Moss would cross the road to The Arboretum pub for a drink. Very much a “fireplace and floorboard” pub, with little in the way of creature comforts, Colin felt at home amongst the working men and the “down at heel” who drank there and the camaraderie of its rough and ready clientele is reflected in many of these works such as The Last Supper and Carrying the Dead Christ. In 1990, an exhibition of this work entitled ‘Paintings, Religious & Profane’ was held at the
Chappel Galleries in Essex. The exhibition received a great deal of media attention, including an interview for BBC News."
Chappel Galleries for many years exhibited work by
Roderick Barrett. David Buckman writes: "Roderic Barrett was one of the most distinctive artists working in Britain in the twentieth century whose importance has yet to be appreciated. He is the opposite of the commercial painter of pretty pictures that fill a gap in the sitting room wall and convey their message in a glance. The Greeks had a saying that “The beautiful things are difficult”. Barrett’s pictures are difficult for anyone seeking easy interpretation, but their reward can be powerful memories. The human condition is Barrett’s subject and his view of it is often bleak and melancholic."
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