Trevor Haddrell RWA SWE: Paintings, drawings and engravings

About

Trevor Haddrell RWA, SWE Artist / printmaker: New exhibition in Tenby

The days aren’t long enough …

After 33 years as a teacher*, Trevor Haddrell retired to become a professional artist in 2000, and is still thrilled to know he now has the whole day ahead of him to do with as he wishes.  He chooses between painting in watercolour, pastels, pen and ink, engraving and coloured lino-cut techniques.  And when he has finished his work, usually in the small hours, then his other main obsession takes over – astronomy – using his large telescope to survey the skies from his Bristol house.

Trevor Haddrell BA, RWA, SWE, artist and print-maker, will be showing his work of 70 pieces at an exhibition at the White Lion Street gallery in Tenby during October.  Each of his predominant themes is represented in one or other medium.

Well known for his engravings of natural forms (Broccoli Forest, Five Courgette Flowers…) he has added large letterbox format images of rows of leaning allotment sheds.  Cats, alert to the supper call, watching a feather drift, wary of the next-door cat, are a closely observed series and include ‘portraits’ of his own that deign to live with him.

The Bristol series includes the industrial area of the docks, Clevedon Pier, and the suspension bridge as well as roads and roof scapes of the city, all rendered as engravings. A large-scale panorama of Bristol, a huge tours de force of accurate drawing, won Trevor a major prize of outstanding merit in the National Print Show held at the RWA in both 1997 and 2006. His largest panorama was 8 feet in length and depicted the city from the rooftops of the Records Office in 2005 when he was artist-in-residence there.

Foreign cities are shown in a series of watercolours of doorways in Malta; watercolours, engravings and sepia engravings of Florence and Siena, including a scene from the dome of the Duomo across the city, based on 2 days of drawing; and engravings of Venice.

Additional subjects include buildings in Bath and Brighton (the pier before it was destroyed by fire), Egyptian ‘fragments’ and Dorset landscapes.  Interiors of theatres and opera houses, with imagined on-stage scenes, are shown in 3-colour prints.

This is a major exhibition by a professional artist, recognised by his peers and elected to the Society of Wood Engravers in 2006 and elected as an academician of the Royal West of England Academy in 2007.  From depicting amusing cat behaviour to intricate vegetative tendrils to huge panoramic city-scapes, Trevor moves effortlessly (apparently) between stark engraving to soft atmospheric watercolour.  It all depends on acute observation, diligent drawing practice and skilful rendering of the medium – and of course the time he’s always chasing…

The exhibition starts on Saturday 1st October and continues until 1st November at the White Lion Street Gallery in Tenby.  The gallery is open from 10 am until 5pm every day except for Wednesdays.  For further information telephone 01834-843375 or view the website www.artmatters.org.uk.