Winter Exhibition at The Beaney

I spent the day last Sunday at The Beaney in Canterbury among the Winter Exhibition as an artist in residence.  It was good to spend some time looking at the exhibition and there is a lot of good work in the show.

The exhibition runs till January 18th 2015 and The Beaney,s website is here.  There's a good cafe in the museum /gallery and other rooms to visit  and a programme of events too.

Talking to some of the visitors was interesting, hearing which pieces they liked and pleased that some people mentioned my work too.

It can also be fun to just watch people in a gallery, how long they take to look around, what work draws them etc. Some people just came in for a minute, someone came in and said this is all modern and walked out, other people looked very carefully at every piece. Couples rarely agreed on which pieces they liked best and children were either bored or commenting on lots of work.

 There is a good mix of work in a variety of mediums, perhaps because I do not use some mediums like, glass and ceramics,  I am drawn to those sorts of work. Jeanette Cook's  Wintery Vale, is a glass piece that I really like and Aya Mouri's Canterbury plate with it's painted map and birds is lovely. Kate Baker's mosaic Starry Winter's Eve is also beautiful.

Other work includes prints,mixed media and photographs. Tracie Piesley's Ice Queen is quirky and iconic and Helen Beeken's Summer Sleeping has similar mythological themes as does Ghosts of the Winter Solstice by Cornwall Jones. Jill Holder's Winter's bones is a thought provoking work and a reminder in my mind of the power of winter.

 Ruth McDonald's concertina is another work I like very much, the black and white landscape with trees evoking the winter theme and the concertina book form giving different views of the landscape.