Location: Art Gallery
When: 4 June – 15 June 2025
Time: Wednesday to Saturday 10am - 4pm, Sunday 1pm - 4pm
About This Exhibition:
This exhibition explores the tension between the temporary and the permanent. In nature, for example, the view of a landscape has a sense of the enduring, while the seasons come and go. Clouds are fleeting but will always return at some point, even though no two cloud formations will ever be the same. A star appears permanent to us but will eventually die and pass into another state. I like this blurring of the fleeting and the lasting.
The title of this exhibition is Doubt the Stars. It’s a reference to Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet.
Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.
These lines suggest that all else can be doubted, except Hamlet’s love. In today’s world it feels that there is so much doubt, as world leaders test the fabric of truth itself, questioning science and verifiable facts.
In these times, I draw hope from simple things that cannot be disputed:
a landscape, the light of the stars, the sea at dawn, or perhaps cloud formations that will never be repeated.
In this exhibition, I explore these themes using oils, watercolours, mixed media, and photography.
Elements of our lives are ever-changing, but some things are constant.
Artist Statement:
As an artist, I relish the freedom of using different mediums to express my thoughts on various themes. My artistic expression covers diverse forms, including painting with oils, acrylics, and watercolours. I also enjoy photography as a way to express ideas, especially when working in a series. These wide-ranging forms of expression have a golden thread running through them, usually a single idea. I prefer approaching my practice conceptually.
My abstracted landscapes and seascapes are an emotional reaction to the scene before me. I am less interested in a photorealistic representation of nature, which frees me when it comes to colours and gestural mark-making.
I explore abstraction even further in watercolour, creating unrepeatable forms and colour combinations, often with accents of metallic paint.
I feel that once painting and photography found me, they quickly became a vital part of my vocabulary. I love that there are some ideas that can only be expressed visually.
