Cercare La Luce: Gareth Edwards RWA | Diana Matthews FRSA | Sue Wales

About

Gareth Edwards, a painter who exhibits internationally and is based in St Ives, has slowly evolved in recent years from abstraction toward a more specifically landscape-based approach. The paintings remain open and free with abstracted elements but are now more spatial, more elemental and evoke emotional weathers and poetic atmospheres as much as topological features. His latest paintings in this exhibition are based on largely Italian coastal subjects.

Contrasting with these ethereal compositions are the more figurative approaches by two painters, Diana Matthews and Sue Wales. Matthews trained at the Bath Academy of Art in the 1950s. Conversely, this artist moved from painterly representation to simplified and abstracted forms, with influences from her tutor, William Scott, the eminent St Ives modernist. Sue Wales trained at Reigate School of Art, Grande Chaumiere, Paris and Academie Julien, Paris. Now based in Somerset, she is a long established member of the Bath Society of Artists and has exhibited in London, throughout the UK and U.S.A. Working exclusively in oils, her work moves between all subject matter, from landscape, portraiture to still lifes and room interiors.

We are delighted to show ceramics for the first time by Jane Sheppard through May and June. Sheppard trained at Bath Spa University and became a full-time lecturer in Art and Design.

In 1998 she travelled through Africa, returning as guest artist to Namibia with British Council funding. She was given the South West Arts Craft Development Award in 1998. A selected member of Craft Potters Association, Jane Sheppard has exhibited in London and is now developing larger, sculptural pieces and teaching the ancient heritage skills of hand-coiling and smoke-firing.