Anna Phelps ~ ‘painting from memory and imagination’

Cristus gallery is very pleased to welcome Anna Phelps to its winter exhibition. After two exhibitions of ideas’ paintings, we were looking for work that could complement in terms of technique and richness of palette, and we were also keen to leave the known world and all its troubles. Anna’s ‘Bacchus’, with its dark crimson, purple and golden hues, seemed the perfect painting to build the exhibition around. Like all of her work, it is highly stylised, theatrical and captivating.
The figures are calm and still but distracted, staring beyond the viewer as if frozen in a moment. It is as though they have stepped forward from their reality, to be painted. They comply.

Anna’s statement on her website http://www.annaphelps.co.uk explains how she arrived at such a distinctive style, by rejecting the trends of art teaching and production, in order to find a method of painting that comes naturally from within. The result is personal and spare, but never ‘primitive’, as the attention to detail is truly breathtaking. Come and see for yourself, at the winter exhibition.

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Victoria Fontaine-Wolf ~ ‘ideal beauty’

Victoria, good friend of Cristus, has twice been reviewed on this site and has for some time been available for portrait commissions at the gallery. This is, however, the first time that we have tempted her to exhibit, with two paintings in the winter exhibition. Both feature contemporary pre-Raphaelite subjects of exquisite charm and beauty. I say contemporary, because they are not the lost or fallen mid-Victorian females of the PRB; rather, in their contentment and demeanour, they are more representative of our times. Isabella (and the pot of basil), featured above, even wears Victoria’s own favourite dress, though painted in a style that would no doubt find Ruskin’s approval.

Sumptuous in colour and detail, elaborately framed, they look magnificent!

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A time to reflect ~ Cristus winter exhibition - starts 30th October

Please call the gallery for opening times, or to arrange a special appointment (01303 223005 or 07759 33 77 499)

Deep rich colours feature in our winter exhibition, with raku ceramics from Shaun Hall, digital art by Dan McCarthy and paintings by Anna Phelps (featured above), Philip Lee, Tracey-Anne Pryke, Saffron Eve, Dee Taylor, Sarah Stokes, Marjorie Wilson and Victoria Fontaine-Wolf.

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‘I am a Stuckist artist’ - Jane Kelly

Soon to exhibit at the Cristus Gallery, Jane Kelly talks about her art, her background and her current projects.

‘I am a Stuckist artist, that is I joined a group of painters, now world wide, who believe that painting is about some skill and a lot of passion, and the ability to use paper, pencil and paint rather than sump oil and dead animals.

In 2000 I exhibited a portrait of Ken Livingstone being tried as a criminal, in the Royal Academy Summer Show, which sold for £1,000. In 2004 I exhibited in The Stuckists Punk Victorian, at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, and sold a painting for several thousand pounds (my best sale yet!) to a commissioner from the EU. It now lives in his home in Luxembourg.
This painting has a dramatic effect on my life; to make it I took a photo from the Daily Mail Weekend Magazine, of a typical Daily Mail family, took out the benevolent Dad and replaced him with Myra Hindley. I wanted to see what she would look like in such a quintessential family group.
I was at the time a staff writer for the Daily Mail and I had been there for fifteen years, drawing a substantial salary. I was promptly fired, and the story, and the painting, made the front page of The Guardian.
Unlike the Mail, which divides people into respectable and monsters, I am fascinated by the nature of evil. I attribute much human catastrophe to problems in early childhood and within families. I like to project my ideas backwards to look at the past and ask: What if?
For instance, the Roman emperors almost all had abusive, chaotic childhoods. Hitler could only feel intimacy and trust with animals, not people. Like Myra they projected their inner torment outward with terrible results. I like to imagine them in different situations with all the monster stripped away.
I am also currently working on some religious paintings, to see if that kind of narrative is possible in this secular age without becoming sentimental or mawkish.
It is almost impossible to paint religious figures convincingly. My painting, ‘In the Juvesence of the year came Christ the tiger, shows christ, as a tiger, being mocked by TV celebs, Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross, and by the pusillanimous Archbishop of Canterbury.
I am also working on some themes from the Lamentations of Jeremiah, linking them to my own life as a lone woman, a woman who still misses the salary and the lifestyle she had on the Daily Mail! On the other hand I am proud to pauper myself and paint.
I also enjoy painting with purely painterly ideas: nudes, still life, landscapes, seascapes. I relish oil paint - nothing can top it.’

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Walking the Bristol AAF with Neil Jones

‘Twice round,’ said Neil. ‘First you must get immediate impressions of what you like, then you can return to have a closer look.’ This we did, while chatting about all things art and exhibiting at Cristus.

We’ve known about Neil for some time, emailed but never met, and marvelled at the impossible realism of his creations.

Like the whole of Bristol, the AAF is impressive on the day. The building in which it functions is a Great Western delight, gothic and massive, with the expected rubbish hanging pipework and overspilling guttering. Somehow, there is comfort in seeing this abuse of our heritage, a reminder of good old British Rail. Neil, a man of gentle nature and refinement, agrees.

Art fairs are the way forward, they say - a way of connecting the seller of art with the buyer. No need for galleries with their limited choice and intimidating ways. Certainly, the format seems to suit everyone. The galleries know that anyone willing to pay £6 to park and £5 to enter is likely to be bristling with art money. No time-wasters here. While the collector no doubt enjoys the sight of gallerists smiling nervously, fiddling with keyboards and constantly rotating their stock. The occasional outgoing brown-paper parcel is evidence that business is being done.

Neil is kinder than me about the quality of the art. On our second circuit, it all starts to become a picture show, but Neil calms me and gets me to look at the positives, not least the amount of meticulous oils on offer. Painting in oils has returned and replaced the splodgy acrylics and conceptual piles of the last decades. If this is a reaction, then I’m broadly in favour of it. Like the old masters, these artists are declaring ‘I can paint feet and hands in oils. Can you?’ But much of the purpose of art is lost if nothing is being expressed, apart from technical excellence.

This is why Neil’s work is so exciting. His painting of ‘Alfred’ is a display of his mastery, while the expression of the sitter’s character prevents a superficial viewing. Similarly, his sculptures have to be touched; and they are so real, it’s like they’ve just died in your hands.

See Neil’s specially commissioned pieces at the forthcoming Cristus Gallery H. G. Wells Festival Exhibition, which forms part of the H G Wells centenary event. Preparations are also well advanced for a Neil Jones solo show in the autumn.

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The Alloway paintings - Loving the art of the near past

Not so long ago, artists lived at the margins. From shabby studios, they produced work that was difficult and abrasive - even brutal. They shunned popularity. For to be popular, one had to conform; and to conform, one had to submit to the general will.

Questions about the nature and purpose of art seldom arose, because art was what they did, come what may. While pandering to the tastes of the mass consumer was unthinkable.

The Alloway paintings, acquired and lovingly restored by Cristus, ‘Nude with Cat’ (1969) and ‘Nude Circle’ (1971), are outstanding examples of this oppositional art. Knocked up on hardboard and skinny laths - themselves an expression of the artist’s condition - they have endured the pangs and scorn of time. Indeed, it is hard to imagine that they have ever been cared for, or displayed with pride. Yet, with the gentle easing of a spirit rag, four decades of filth make way for truths. We are struck by the artist’s thoughts, his fears, his time, his rebellion, and his unquestionable skill; but we also sense that the paintings are as vital as the moment of their conception, and that they are imbued with an integrity that is beyond question.

While other art arrives and is checked for dinks, like any other merchandise, the Alloways interfuse with the viewer. Even during restoration, they were taken from the workroom, hung on walls and examined, discussed and re-examined by us Cristusians.

In these, and in the one other painting we have seen, Alloway describes an urban, modern or near-futuristic vision. Spectral figures appear, writhing in a ring of despair in ‘Circle’, while encased in specimen jars in ‘Cat’. The nude is most present on the crimson sofa, but she too is obscured by the cat and her lower limbs are fading into pools of liquid light. Outside the glare radiates into the spaces and the figures await their fate. The resignation, alienation and loss of faith runs parallel to the themes of absurdist drama. These were the concerns of the artists of the time, and that’s why Alloway painted them. He is part of a rich tradition of British post-war avant-garde artists who have hitherto been much-undervalued. But who is this Dennis Alloway, whom, we are told, attended the Royal Academy School then disappeared from view? Please let us know.

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