4th October 2024 - 2nd November 2024
RHYTHM and RHYME
Preview: Friday 4th October 17:30 onwards, all welcome!
An exhibition of Painting, Drawing, and Sculpture by Jane Hedges, Duff Pearce, and Ian Middleton shows three very individual approaches to creative endeavour and expression. Although their work and approaches appear very different, common preoccupations and concerns are evident and friendship and mutual respect have maintained the dialogue and interest in each other’s work. They have established close working relationships since the 1980s and have shown together periodically.
Jane Hedges is an abstract painter with an astute knowledge and understanding of colour, her paintings ‘grow’ on the canvas, each layer a complex and intuitive response to the last, an ongoing exploration of colour, structure and mark-making. These lyrical, and engaging paintings lift the spirits, an ensemble of optimism, colour and light.
Duff Pearce’s work is underpinned by his exceptional draughtsmanship, a figurative painter and prolific printmaker recurring subjects include people, boats, harbours, and interiors. Usually, hard edged he works with strong geometric shapes, repeated pattern and mark making which he pushes to the point of abstraction generating movement and tensions as the compositions develop.
Ian Middleton uses ‘found objects’ in his sculptures and a range of processes including casting carving and assemblage. He explores relationships between the different elements in the work, evoking associations, humour, feelings of familiarity, nostalgia and sometimes foreboding. JANE HEDGES Places evoke emotion and places are my starting point. My paintings are a response to the changing colours and play of light I experience in daily life. I use abstraction to generalise particular visual experiences: fragmentation of light through trees, the isolation of views and colours through doors and windows, illumination of the everyday world through positive and negative shapes. Captivated in this way by light, abstraction evolves in the pictorial space. Photographs and drawings play a part, reducing the subject matter to a grid and transforming each square to a series of geometric shapes. I layer and re-arrange the picture surface over time, breaking down the picture plane, the painting becomes a number of paintings, geometric webs and structures each worked over the last in response to the complexity and colours of its predecessors. With each layer I work across the canvas and gradually as the colours harmonise and the rhythms evoke my initial feelings the painting begins to emerge. The geometry generates energy and movement, a development fundamental to the evolution of my paintings. I begin to find the painting within the painting. I show regularly in the bi-annual Dorset Open Studios and at the Royal West of England Academy, I had a successful show at the Acanthus Gallery in Wareham, and have shown at Discerning Eye. I studied at Brighton and Maidstone Colleges of Art and Goldsmiths College London and taught for many years specialising in painting and drawing. DUFF PEARCE I was fortunate to study at a time when drawing was highly valued in Art Schools, and drawing remains fundamental to my practice. I work most days and am rarely far from a sketch book, drawing from life, memory and imagination. I have long been interested in early 20 Century Modernist painting especially Cubism, and in particular Braque and Juan Gris. I collect African Art, and I’m intrigued by the decoration found in ‘Primitive Art’. I break up the picture plane using geometry and pattern to orchestrate rhythms and interactive dynamics between different elements of the composition. I made very large ceramic pots and clay sculpture for years and that sculptural physicality is prevalent in my imagery and quite literally in the lino cutting. My daughter introduced me to relief printmaking when she was an art student, it appealed to me immediately: I particularly enjoyed the cutting, mark making and printing. The process incorporates a lot of drawing although the reverse images often bewildered me when I peeled back the paper. I’ve found a new freedom with the medium now and have taken the lino into the life room with surprising results, Recurrent themes in my work include figures, still life studies, boat yards, boats and harbours. Boats, are an iconic form which has been around for thousands of years; I like the way people who renovate them paint them. Exhibitions include the Young Contemporaries ICA London, Richard Demarco Gallery Edinburgh, Jerwood Drawing at Cheltenham, Drawings and Sculpture with Ian Middleton the County Museum Dorchester, Manhattan Graphics New York, RWA Bristol (Prize winner), Millfield Open (Prize winner), Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and Art Loan and one-man exhibitions at Bournemouth University. I have shown regularly at the RWA and was selected for their Open Print and Strange worlds exhibitions. I studied at Cheltenham & Bournemouth Colleges of Art. IAN MIDDLETON I’m interested in current affairs and the forces which shape our lives. Media images, news clips or junk shop finds might provide a starting point, perhaps connecting with something seen or found earlier. My work is modelled or constructed, and some elements are carved in wood, I often use ‘found objects’ chosen for a particular ‘presence’, association or familiarity, I may modify them or re-make them to change the scale. I make moulds to cast plaster, cement or wax (which I cast myself in bronze), and use a ‘cut and paste’ process to build assemblages. Casting enables me to select materials for substance, colour, or surface and gives the option of repetition. I work intuitively, and sculptures evolve through arrangement and juxtaposition in the studio. The work is not constrained by initial starting points but evolves independently while maintaining the intensity of its origins. Exhibitions include the Toyamura International Sculpture Biennale Japan, ‘One Man’ exhibitions at the Barbican Centre and Winchester and Norwich Cathedrals. I organised and co-curated ‘Sculpture a Spectator Sport’ at Bryanston Park and had work in the Iron Tribe exhibition New Mexico USA. In 2018 I instigated and co-curated an Open Sculpture Exhibition at the Royal West of England Academy. I’ve shown at Wells Contemporary and Discerning Eye receiving the Founder’s Prize a major award in 2022. I studied at the Cambridge Institute of Education, Sheffield College of Art and the Royal College of Art (major travelling scholarship) and worked with Eduardo Paolozzi before moving to the Southwest. I taught sculpture at University for the Creative Arts Farnham and in 2013 did a fellowship at Chelsea College of Art. In 2014 I was elected an RWA and was a Council Member for six years.
