The exhibition presents interpretations of landscape from across two centuries drawn from the collection of Nicholas Holloway Fine Art and the contemporary vision of Helen Taylor. With fine examples of the work of Thomas Churchyard, Harry Becker and Helen’s beautiful evocation of the river Deben there is a local focus which broadens out to include British and Continental landscape painting.
The paintings and drawings in the exhibition have their roots in nature and the landscape whether constructed en plein air or in the studio. The artists here seek to make connections and tell tales. They remind us that Nature is more powerful than all else.
For Helen Taylor, responding to and recording landscape is a way of communicating an image of home and of her affiliation with place. Daily walks in Woodbridge, provide a time for observation and reflection on this. Noticing the way, for example, the substance, the hue, the texture of the riverbed is altered in the changing light, which might be re-told in the paintings via tint and tone, lively brushwork and mark making.
‘Places seem to me to have some kind of memory, in that they activate memory in those who look at them.’ WG Sebald
‘Landscape painting catches at those unexpected ideas and emotions that come, and so easily go, on days of no particular importance.’ Christopher Neve
‘My paintings talk in colour and any of the shapes are there to express colour, but not outline.‘ Winifred Nicholson