artisan contemporary art gallery starter show of South African Fine art.

Work shown in partnership with  the alderman gallery Cape Town, South Africa. If you would like further details please contact me.

One of the most difficult things for an artist is to make the first mark on a clean sheet of paper or a white canvas. The thought of putting artwork on the expanse of pristine white wall did I must admit have a simular feeling of anxiety. So, today when I carried Donna's and Chris's work upstairs into the space I was unsure about how the things would look, especially when I had last seen these large canvases on the Gallery wall in Chelsea.

The work is challenging me in this Bolton studio, large nude life drawings undertaken with great skill in a life study class in Gill's Gallery studio a part of the Allderman Gallery which is based in Kennilworth, Cape Town. The African colour, the size and the way in which they are undertaken brings them to the point where their form is now dictating the space that they are in and how we reference it. The space now appears to be an African one. This change has taken me out of the comfort zone of an English landscape artist and has made me re question my work and I think because of that it will make me question how the gallery should be developed asa painters gallery.

Donna's authoritative figurative work is excellent her drawing, her line work, and use of form works well with the thin ]washes and rips of African ochres and reds. Her proud and handsome male and female figures I feel could almost walk from their canvas's, Gills work is more abstract her dark amorphous figures look away in brooding thought, their surfaces glisten with physical washes, splashes, drips and smears of oily paint underneath which run strong lines.

South Africa comes to Lancashire and gets the ball rolling. Thanks Donna and Gill.