Presteigne attracts top artists for sixth annual show

11:53am Thursday 24th April 2008

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THE 2008 Presteigne Art Show features more than 300 new works by 78 contemporary British artists, sculptors, makers and silversmiths.

Among the exhibiting painters and printmakers this year are three Royal Academicians – Norman Ackroyd, Anthony Green and Ben Levene, plus, from London and southern England, Harriet Barber, Tony Birks-Hay, Penny Graham, Rosemary Lindsay, Tim Scott Bolton and Vincent Yorke.

Local artists showing for the first time include Anthony Morris, member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, and Clare Woods who, in the last 12 months, has exhibited in Los Angeles, Athens, Prague, Berlin and London, plus David Birtwhistle and David Prentice, from Worcestershire, and Ian Cole and Samantha Dadd, from Gloucestershire.

Clare Woods moved from London to Kington two years ago, with her husband, sculptor Desmond Hughes, who is also exhibiting at Presteigne. Clare, who was shortlisted for the Beck’s Futures prize in 2001, has painted two small watercolours for the prestigious Presteigne event, canvases on a very much smaller scale than she generally works in. Her enormous ‘canvases’ depict a unique landscape created from photographs taken in the dead of night and brought to completion with a painstaking process of building up layers of enamel paint on surfaces such as MDF and wood. For Presteigne, she has created two works that explore her fascination with sign posting.

Anthony Morris, who lives just over the border in Monmouthshire, is a member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and the New English Art Club, both of which have a long-standing tradition of British figurative and representational painting. Malvern-based David Prentice is an internationally renowned landscape painter who has won a significant number of prestigious awards, including, last year, third prize in the Kaupthing Singer and Friedlander/Sunday Times Watercolour Competition, the fourth time he had achieved success in the competition.

Popular regulars include Seren Bell, Kate Corbett-Winder, Simon Dorrell, Shan Egerton, Lois Hopwood, Guy Lester, Charles MacCarthy, Julian Meredith and Cecily Sash, and many more.

The emphasis is on small works, but the range of subject matter is vast, from botanical works on vellum and local landscapes, to seascapes, still lives, architecture, interiors, figures, animals, trompe l’oeil and allegory.

This year’s event also showcases a wide range of three-dimensional work, including bronzes by Jemma Pearson, creator of Hereford’s Elgar statue, Priscilla Hann, Desmond Hughes, Tania Mosse and Mark Richards, stonecarving by Diana Hoare, new ceramic sculpture by Pierre Williams, whose four seated blue-and-white male nudes were a highlight of the h.Art Open Exhibition last year, engraved glass by Nancy Sutcliffe and Charlie Waterman’s sculpture in Jesmonite.

Silversmiths Tim Gibbs, Andrew Marsden and Wally Gilbert return, the latter also showing new work in bronze created on a recent residency in Philadelphia. Taking part for the first time are Sheffield-based Keith Tyssen, showing work in pewter alongside silver objects, Herefordshire’s Claire Malet displaying her recycled metal vessels, gilded with copper and gold, and young local silversmith Lorna Davis.

The exhibition is in Presteigne’s medieval parish church. Artists donate a percentage of their sales to the Friends of St Andrew’s for the ongoing restoration of the church.

It runs on Saturday and Sunday, May 3 and 4, from 11am to 2pm (admission £5, to include refreshments); 2pm to 5pm (£2); and Monday, May 5, from 11am to 4pm (admission free).