Earlier this year I was talking about how to balance being both an artist and fine a art printer (“Balancing Act” – Summer Equinox edition), each with its own benefits and challenges on time and resources. I have now added to that mixture, as recently I was asked to become the Manager for the G&C Gallery in Tunbridge Wells. So now along with Claudia Wiegand from ‘Claudia Wiegand Handmade Glass’ we have taken on this new challenge to further expand the opportunities to promote the arts and culture of our talented community of artists in the South East as well as now being able to offer established artists from around the UK and Internationally to show and promote their works right in the heart of Tunbridge Wells.
The G&C Gallery was formerly a private rather than public gallery but we have now made the gallery open to the public and welcome everyone to come and sample our collections of fabulous works that we have assembled both for general and specialised shows. We are currently running a fantastic ‘Still Life’ exhibition which runs to the 9th November and then a new exhibition ‘Picture as it is 2’ by Li Mang will show from the 16th November.
I recently unveiled my new works for 2018 at the September Art Show in Wadhurst, showing three pieces that demonstrate a slightly new direction for the next twelve months. ‘Apollo’ is the first of a series of works titled ‘Voyeur’ in which I examine my favourite pastime of people watching. Here I paint a view of a crowd of people who are looking at an event off canvas. There are plenty of clues as to the event going on and you, the viewer, can pick out clues with well know figures and objects within the frame that lead you to the subject and time frame of the event.
The title is a give-away but the next image will be more challenging to piece together. I also showed my follow-up to the ‘The Bull’ painting with ‘Elephant Barrier’ as well as a development of my glass engraved prints which are now fully lit from within the frame to show the engraved element by projecting light down the plane of the glass.
All of these images will be on show at the ‘December Art Show’ which will be held at the PowderMills hotel in Battle alongside many other great works from the 1st – 9th December 2018, another must see event for the diary, especially with Christmas upon us.
So 2018 has been a great year for the arts in the South East and it will be interesting to see what develops over 2019 with some great plans already in the pipeline which we hope to reveal in the months ahead.
Written by Neal Scrase.
Neal Scrase:, art@nealscrase.com, www.nealscrase.com
G&C Gallery: www.gcgallery.co.uk, info@gcgallery.co.uk
Claudia Wiegand: www.claudiawiegand.co.uk
