Events
Prieview of “Chiaroscuro” – Clear/Dark – ‘the obvious versus the hidden’.
Friday 31 August 2007 to Friday 31 August 2007
Preview of a a Selling Exhibition of works by Lesley Coates Jones, Ken Jones, Peter Wray RE and Angela Keeble at Hornseys - ‘the gallery’ at 3, Kirkgate, Ripon.
Lesley Coates Jones’s paintings are optimistic and celebratory. Not seeking to imitate life, they anticipate and share the unexpected. Abstract and semi-abstract, the work is informed by her interest in theatre, music, dance and literature. She has an ongoing fascination with ancient signs, texts and alphabets, and the alliance between painting and language, which enriches and sustains her work. The drawings are sourced from landscape, organic and manmade forms and support the structure of the painting, underpinning its philosophical concerns, encouraging the viewer participation and intrigue.
Ken Jones believes art is about itself, the motivation to begin and the physical and the processes that bring it into being. It is also an inquiry into possibilities. He does not have a specific end in mind when he begins to work. Painting has to be flexible and open-ended enough to allow for alternative approaches. The end point comes at the moment of recognition when the varying elements have been brought together and resolved. The work is abstract, which was a conscious decision to move away from the distractions of narrative interpretations. He uses simple forms and a limited palette.
Peter Wray RE is a printmaker and painter based in Yorkshire. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers and his work is in national collections. Peter trained as a painter, extending his practise into printmaking in the early 1970’s, after being exposed to the richness and unique expressive power of the intaglio surface. His influences are many: semi-religious symbols remembered from a catholic childhood; the exquisite, accidental, sculptural imagery of the allotment garden; graffiti and cave paintings enjoyed on travels abroad; the childhood fascination with the ‘printed’ images of fossils found in the shale tips near his home; early memories of coal mining and, later, steelworks industries, where numbers, shapes, words and marks chalked on oxidising steel panels held a mystery of meaning which continues to weave its spell for him.. All of this is combined with a rejoicing in the qualities of materials and process and the ‘joy’ of making…
Angela Keeble returned to her long-standing interest in art after pursuing various other careers. She studied for six years in the private studios of practising artists where she was encouraged to develop her individual approach to painting. Initially Angela painted directly from observation of a subject but now increasingly she relies on recollections and images from places where she has lived. Angela works predominantly in oil; her concerns are with the relationship between colour, shapes and texture, some paintings having developed in a more abstract way than others. Her work expresses a conceptual response to ideas and memories, which, whilst providing an initial starting point, are not, intended to lead to a factual representation.
For further details email thegallery@hornseys.com or call 01765 602878. To view Hornseys full catalogue of Contemporary and Modern 20th Century Art visit www.hornseys.com
