Andrew Douglas-Forbes, Theo Crutchley-Mack, Carl Chapple

About

The Albany Gallery celebrates its reopening after the Covid-19 lockdown with a show featuring Andrew Douglas-Forbes, Carl Chapple and Theo Crutchley-Mack.

The three-artist show originally went online due to the Coronavirus pandemic, but now visitors to the gallery will be able to see the fabulous images of landscapes, flowers and dancers from Ballet Cymru, all in varying styles and materials typical to each artist.

Andrew Douglas-Forbes, grew up on Gower, Swansea, and after training in London as a singer he lived and sang professionally in Italy for six years before moving back to Wales settling in Llandeilo.

His work focuses on nature with still life paintings of flowers, such as snowdrops and he says he often finds himself deep in conversation with all things related to the slumber and sleep of winter as it arises and shows the promise of spring.

Painter Carl Chapple is artist in residence with Ballet Cymru, Wales’s international ballet company. His work is held in private collections across the UK and internationally, and is represented in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art Cymru.

Carl has been working with Wales’s international dance company Ballet Cymru since 2016. Observing rehearsals, often from the early stages of new productions, he has been able to develop insights into some of the disciplines and creative processes of Ballet Cymru dancers and choreographers, and to consider new approaches to figure painting.

This has included collaborations with dancers, drawing on their ideas, experience and training to develop compositions through improvisation and discussion, sometimes using moments or sequences from company productions as starting points.

Bristol-born Theo Crutchley-Mack strives to record the obscure landscape, often choosing to paint late-night street scenes and gritty industrial boat yards. He has spent recent months working in the landscapes of South Wales, developing a small collection that will be introduced at the Albany Gallery show.

There are two themes to Theo’s work in his latest collection­­ - densely textured paintings depicting small abandoned rowing boats with broken wooden hulls and peeling paint and also, gritty and powerful urban scenes of Cardiff and Cowbridge after dark, with lonely figures walking amongst the architectural forms of the night.