Gallery VII
David Tindle RA, 'The Bed with Phone'. Egg tempera, 124 x 85cm. Photo: John Bodkin/DawkinsColour Hung by Olwyn Bowey, who says excitedly that ‘I’ve never arranged such a big gallery before’, this room concentrates mainly on her principal interests: still-life and landscape. But as well as painting she includes photography, which she admits ‘is quite a new thing for me’. Leon Steele’s large photographic image Heath 15 is a very silvery scene, alive with clematis on the branches of its trees. But the main emphasis rests on paintings. David Tindle provokes our curiosity by showing a phone abandoned – possibly in an emergency – on an empty bed. He leaves us to speculate about what might have happened here, whereas Elizabeth Blackadder avoids narrative altogether in her limpid oil painting called, very straightforwardly, Still-life: Ribbon and Fruit.
Anthony Green also explores flowers, but he engages with death as well as life. His impressive painting Sunflowers on Margaret’s Trestle Table shows one dying flower lying forlorn and withered on the table top. And Jane Domingos presents an even more ominous image. Her immense canvas is covered with black paint, and only five tiny images of leaves, trees, an acorn and a pot are permitted to emerge from the otherwise pervasive darkness.
Philip Sutton’s brilliantly coloured still-life challenges us with its title: What Is This, an Illusion! And Sonia Lawson’s freely handled painting of an ornamental gate is called Portal to Shangri Bloody-La.
