Here’s one for early next year to put in your diary.
Quay Arts proudly present this outstanding exhibition by Kurt Jackson, one of Britain’s leading landscape painters.
Born in 1961, his work embraces an extensive range of materials and techniques. Jackson’s paintings are set in places that have been travelled to and explored regularly throughout his life and seen through the eyes of an artist with a deep understanding of natural history and ecology, politics and environmental issues.
A personal connection with his subject matter is important to Kurt and he has known the Solent area since childhood when his parents ran an art shop in Southampton:
“I sketched and scribbled along this coast through my late teens and early twenties with those glimpses of the Isle of Wight across the Solent; walking the Solent Way south of the Forest, bird watching at Farlington marshes, drinking in the pub on Langstone Harbour and swimming off Hayling Island; so that the idea of returning here and producing a more intensely worked series of paintings has been sitting at the back of my mind for sometime.”
The project started in the New Forest in the summer of 2007 and since then Jackson has travelled the Solent Way, passing through Southampton, Gosport and Portsmouth and on to Emsworth. He then crossed to the Isle of Wight to get an islander’s perspective on the Solent. It is an area that he knows well but which, until now, he has never painted.
As Kurt puts it:
“this will be my first voyage of discovery to the Isle of Wight, and a return to where the New Forest reaches the coast, and the Solent’s salt marshes and shingle beaches, creeks and estuaries. Mud, sand, shingle, trees and seawater and perhaps a city or two all mixed up with the paint”.
Jackson’s working methods are intense. Paintings are created in situ, imparting an energy and immediacy to the composition, but also capturing the atmosphere of the day and a perceptible sense of place.
The results of Kurt’s interaction with the Solent landscape have been gathered together in an exhibition which opens at the St. Barbe Gallery in Lymington on 16th August, before touring to the Gosport Gallery in October and Quay Arts Centre on the Isle of Wight in January 2009. A fully illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition.
Exhibition sponsored by Brewin Dolphin, Lymington
Bits and Bobs:
Michael West Gallery, Quay Arts
Sat 17 Jan – Sat 28 Feb 09
Drinks Reception: Sat 17 Jan 2 – 4pm. All welcome
Free Entry
