Figuratively Speaking Exhibition – Preview

You are cordially invited to our exhibition preview “Figuratively Speaking“:

This wonderful exhibition features the work of three very prestigious artists – Clare Lord (painter), David Gleeson (painter) and Denise Dutton (sculptor). Together their work creates a powerful emotional bond with the audience.

Clare is a Staffordshire artist who has pursuing her love of art since retiring as a headteacher. Her painting, ‘The Blue Bucket’ won the Arthur Berry prize at the Three Counties Open and she subsequently used it to apply for Landscape Artist of the Year 2021 [Series 6].

As a result she eventually reached the final of Landscape Artist of the Year as one of three out of three thousand applications.

Her painting from the heat at West Wycombe Park and her painting of Trinity Buoy Wharf, from the final, form part of this exhibition.

Her work, much of which was completed in Staffordshire and Derbyshire reflects her love of nature as well as her belief in the beauty in the ordinary.

David’s work is representational and is mostly a slow and thoughtful process. This work is grounded in observation and is complex and detailed using a variety of skills and media. He combines ideas, symbols, narrative, conjecture. In much of his work he  explores the everyday, a world that is barely glimpsed and often overlooked. The inclusion of figures outside and inside allows the transience of everyday life to be held up to scrutiny and in so doing, explore the transformation of the ordinary into the sublime. Much of my recent work includes figures outside and inside. The onlooker is invited to pause and consider how the commonplace is strangely, and at times, achingly, beautiful.

Denise’s powerful sculptures feature the human and animal form. She has a particular interest in horses. The work is muscular and emotionally truthful with a sensation of energy paused for a fleeting second. Denise studied at the Sir Henry Doulton School of sculpture in Fenton, Stoke on Trent, where she was encouraged to supplement her human anatomy studies with animal anatomy, spending periods of time at the veterinary colleges in both London and Cambridge. Clay is her preferred medium, butt she also works in wax and plaster, usually casting into bronze, sometimes resin.

The exhibition starts on 7th May and runs until 17th June.