Brian Sinfield Art Gallery
Christmas Exhibition
Christmas Exhibition 3 December - 31 December 2022
If your mind feels like a blank canvas when it comes to choosing that special Christmas gift then let us inspire you with our collection of paintings by artists the gallery represents.
The exhibition will be available to view from 3rd December and will continue to run until 31st December. A digital catalgoue will be available soon.
Painting shown here by Gavin Watson: Pugmalion | oil on board | 18 x 24 cm. Gavin lives and works in rural Northumberland,. His paintings explore the relationship between human and animal, and the internal and external worlds we share.
A list of all available paintings in the Christmas exhibition will be available to view shorlty. here
Featured
Dr PJ Crook
Born in Cheltenham, where she still lives, PJ studied at Gloucestershire College of Art and Design which was eventually absorbed by the University where she was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Arts in 2010 and in 2011 an MBE for services to art in the Queen's Birthday Honours. She is represented by galleries in London, New York, Paris and Toronto, as well as here in the Cotswolds, and her work is in major public, corporate and private collections in many parts of the world, principally in Japan, France, Saudi Arabia, England and the United States of America. Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum, Gloucester City Museum and Art Gallery; Imperial War Museum; Morohashi Museum of Modern Art; Standard Chartered Bank; Centrica; Paul Allen; the Marquess of Bath; the late Jackie Collins and Toyah Willcox are among those who have works in their collections.
From a studio opposite her house, she manages compositions on a monumental scale - paintings can measure 2 x 4.5 metres and also paints small pictures, some no larger than 10 cm square. She works in tinted gesso, acrylic and sometimes in oil on canvas, or on a corrugated wood support, which gives a three dimensional effect to her work, as does her practice of incorporating the frame within the composition. A recurring theme within her work is crowd interaction and some of these paintings have been used as covers for King Crimson's recent albums.
PJ is a Patron of the National Star College, Cheltenham; a Trustee and Director of ACS (the Artists Collecting Society); President of the Friends of Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum; a Gloucestershire Ambassador; Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts; member of the Royal West of England Academy (and sometime member of its Council); Manchester Academy of Fine Art; Chelsea Arts Club and the Honourable Company of Gloucestershire.
We are fortunate enough to have had the pleasure of representing PJ for many years.
Painting featured: Noah and His Ark, tinted gesso on panel | 43 x 48 cm
Just In
Felice Hodges
“Trying to describe Felice Hodges’ wonderful paintings with accuracy can be difficult because – like the truest art – they transcend the harsh rigidities and conformities of language. She makes paintings that may first appear wholly abstract and gestural in expression but, on continued looking, are generally rooted in a specific place or moment which their titles and forms gradually reveal. They hover between abstraction and the mysterious, transformed poetic reality that the viewer becomes immediately caught up in and a part of, and the viewer becomes part of an interaction or dialogue with the picture itself. The evocative mood and atmosphere of these paintings is often suggested by subtle, ravishing harmonies of colour. Tones and colours are laid next to, or over each other, to create highly original and unexpected chromatic combinations which are also intensely beautiful. These have a direct effect on the viewer’s emotions.
Felice trained as a musician and continues her musical interests and in this her work is reminiscent of the tone poems of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. Such music is ethereal and free flowing, intangible, yet contained within a highly effective structure. Felice’s paintings have a similar enigmatic character. The surface of these canvases is highly, richly complex, also like a musical composition.
Felice contrasts the different textures and effects that derive from working paint with stiff and soft brushwork, bold gestures set against more contained ones. She combines acrylics with other media, and sometimes the paintings contain collaged elements.
I am reminded of another painter, James McNeil Whistler who, … suppressed narrative in favour of evoking in his viewers delicate yet penetrating emotional states. Felice’s expressive approach to painting and perception is one that enriches all who see it.” Robert Upstone, Former Head of British Art, Tate Modern
Painting Featured: Red Squares | oil on canvas board | 49 x 49 cm