Nature and Magic: Summer at Sarah Wiseman Gallery
Introducing Sarah Wiseman Gallery’s Summer exhibitions! In July we launch ‘The Artist Gardener’ with new works by Fletcher Prentice and Dawn Stacey. Playing with composition, colour and texture gardening has had a long association with making art; and indeed many artists, writers and poets are famously keen gardeners and naturalists with Claude Monet, a very famous example.
In September, we will launch ‘Spellbound’, an exploration of art and magic with new works by Daniel Ablitt and Flora McLachlan. Each seeks out the unreal and magical in familiar landscapes; Daniel does so by playing with scale and atmosphere, whilst Flora immerses herself in the leaves and the tiny beasts of the hedgerows, revealing the magic hidden there. Find out more below...
Fletcher Prentice and Dawn Stacey: The Artist Gardener
9th July - 6th August
Following the success of ‘The Painted Garden’, we’re returning to the garden as creative, expressive space, exploring the enduring influence of horticulture and gardening on visual art. Fletcher Prentice will present a new collection celebrating the vibrancy and energy of a summer garden, along with richly painted and beautifully observed flower still-life. Dawn Stacey’s intricate, yet delicate works explore the natural rhythms and patterns that are woven through nature. In her recent work, she has explored the pleasing geometry of a garden, painting linear pathways contrasted with frothing petals and leaves.
‘Visual art and horticulture are two disciplines that share a long association. Claude Monet was perhaps most famously influenced by his garden at Giverny,’ says Sarah Wiseman, gallery director. ‘With later twentieth century examples of gardening artists including Derek Jarman and Barbara Hepworth, gardening lends itself naturally to painting as a visual stimulus, but there are wider, more deeply felt implications to consider. Gardening is cyclical; in a garden we witness new growth, but also its decline and decay as the seasons change.’
‘We are tuned in more than ever with our outdoor environments, and there is a renewed interest in nature and the outdoors, especially with more people now working from home. Gardens in their many forms – be it a public park to a back patio have become essential places of refuge.’
We are preparing a fully illustrated catalogue with all available works and artists’ texts; email us here to request a link: info@wisegal.com or sign up for our mailing list.
Spellbound: Magic and Nature by Daniel Ablitt and Flora McLachlan
10th September - 1st October
Sarah Wiseman Gallery is proud to announce ‘Spellbound’ an exploration of myth and landscape by two prominent contemporary artists: Daniel Ablitt and Flora McLachlan.
‘We brought these two artists together as each works in their own distinct way tapping into and responding to landscape, but in a deeper sense, revealing the magic within real world settings,’ explains Sarah Wiseman, director of the gallery.
Bristol-based Daniel Ablitt focusses on scale and wonder playing on the viewer’s sense of yearning and wanderlust. He creates fleeting, story-like scenes featuring distant figures engaged in conversation or small boats lit up on a starry lake. They give the impression of a story in progress, rather than a fixed narrative. His paintings are informed by his extensive travels across the globe, each work containing the awesome landscapes of Latin America, South-East Asia and the birch forests of Northern Europe.
Flora McLachlan is well known for her interpretations of myth and the embedding of ancient stories and legends in the land under our feet. However, more recently she has been exploring the playful magic in nature, immersing herself in the sappy, scented greenery that teems with life. Flora’s latest work is looser and more expressive, exploring weedy ‘edge-lands’ that she recalls would cover over her head as a child, but now is waist high. To Flora, it’s a transformative place where she becomes rooted in its midst, eye level with the tiny beings that live there.
She says: ‘I can enter this magical world at will, loop myself with goose-grass and move empowered through the dew of every morning.’
Sarah Wiseman Gallery is preparing an e-catalogue where you can preview all available works and texts about the artists. Sign up via our website, or email us to request a link: info@wisegal.com
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