Traces of the unseen and the transient

On sunny days, while waiting for the train Peter S. Smith draws his shadow as it extends across the station. He constructs these drawings by sketching the outline in a couple of minutes while waiting for the train before adding the tone over the course of the journey. This daily drawing practice keeps him 'visually fit' while also providing inspiration for engravings and, more recently, paintings.

As Simon Brett has written 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.' The paintings, drawings and prints that he recently showed at One Paved Court displayed playful and profound engagements with these shadow effects in work that combined abstract patterning, figurative representation of shadows and platform furniture with traces of the unseen and the transient.

The exhibition reflected Peter's his interest in normal everyday experiences and the ways that these can be transformed by the materials, processes and metaphors of a shared visual language.

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. Simon Brett explains that Peter 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.'

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers and a Member of the Society of Wood Engravers. His work is held in many private and public collections including, Tate Britain; The Ashmolean, Oxford; The Fitzwilliam, Cambridge; The Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam and The Glenbow Museum, Calgary, Canada.

Simon Brett, in reviewing ‘The Way I See It’, said: 'Peter’s wood engravings and etchings are so much expressions of the identical sensibility, rather than exercises in contrasted media, that they subliminally make one think of him not as a wood engraver or an etcher as such, at all, but as a printmaker and an artist. Not all wood engravers achieve that, let alone effortlessly. He has done his printmaking MA, he knows all about techniques but he never succumbs to the flash or relies on the technically accomplished. He keeps his work and us always on the edge.'

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Duke Special - Condition.

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."

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Duke Special - Condition.

Modern art and City churches

The statue of St Michael commemorating the fallen of World War I at St Michael Cornhill is a bronze from 1920 by Richard Reginald Goulden. A winged and helmeted Christian angel brandishing a flaming sword, stands on a stone which bears the inscription. To the left two wild cats prowl; to the right, four cherubic children cluster at the angelic feet.

During the Great War, 1914 - 1919, the names were recorded on this site of 2130 men who from offices in the parishes of this united benefice volunteered to serve their country in the Navy and Army. Of these it is known that at least 170 gave their lives for the freedom of the world.

In WW1 Goulden served with the Royal Engineers in France. Other London works by Goulden include: a war memorial at St John, Hackney, the Hornsey County School War Memorial now housed in the Crouch End Town Hall, the St Christopher statue on the war memorial at the Bank of England in Threadneedle Street, and a memorial in Kensal Green cemetery to Thomas Power O'Connor.

The memorial window in the narthex of St Andrew by the Wardrobe is dedicated to Sir Ivor Bulmer Thomas, who masterminded the reconstruction of the church after the war. A detailed etching of St Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe can be seen in the window.

An energetic Renaissance man – former spy, athlete and leader writer for The Times, Labour MP for Keighley and devout Christian – Ivor Bulmer-Thomas (1905–93) was determined to make a difference and gathered together his closest allies and influential friends to form a new charity, the Friends of Friendless Churches, inaugurated on 3 July 1957 in Committee Room 13 of the House of Commons. The architect Harry Goodhart-Rendel, the philanthropist Samuel Gurney, the politician Roy Jenkins, Lady Mander, the artist John Piper, the banker and politician John Smith, and the architectural historian John Summerson were all members of the first Executive Committee. John Betjeman was elected Honorary Editor, Lawrence Jones Honorary Secretary, and the architect Sir Albert Richardson a Vice President.

This window was engraved by Frank Grenier F.G.E. who has been engraving glass for over 20 years. He studied under Simon Whistler and has held exhibitions in London, Hong Kong, Maastricht, Leerdam, Oxford and Cambridge. He is a Fellow of the Guild of Glass Engravers. He engraves with tungsten points and diamond burrs. His work ranges from goblets to church windows, and includes clear and coloured glass.

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Harold Darke - Sanctus.

Windows and gardens: Chigwell and Capel Manor

I went with my Mum and youngest daughter today to see St Mary's Chigwell, as it is the church where my eldest daughter will be getting married this summer. The church has an engraved window of Christ and the Children by Jennifer Conway, who was a pupil of John Hutton. When Hutton's King Lear and Cordelia panel at the entrance to the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Gallery at Stratford upon Avon was damaged, Conway made a copy. Her engraved windows can be found at St Mary Barcombe and St Nicholas Sandhurst, as well as St Mary Chigwell. St Mary's also have a Christ and the Magi window by Frederick Cole. Afterwards we went to see the interesting show gardens at Capel Manor.

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Larry Norman - She's A Dancer.

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."

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Iona - Let Your Glory Fall.