Louise McClary: Your Green Voice
31 March - 13 May 2012
Painting from nature is not copying from the object; it is realising one’s own sensations. – Cézanne
Kestle Barton, Rural Centre for Contemporary Arts is proud to launch our third season with the eloquent and poetic paintings of Louise McClary.
The body of work that makes up the forthcoming Your Green Voice exhibition at Kestle Barton has been over a year in the making. McClary has spent a cycle of seasons walking, drawing, writing and painting between where she lives on The Lizard and Kestle Barton – just three miles away. This relatively small area of farm and woodlands was already well worn and much loved by McClary and it is her familiarity and passion for the local landscape that inspired the conception for the show. It is the revisiting of these places and the discovery of new sights within them that has ultimately informed the vibrant paintings that make up this collection. Of the experience McClary has written:
As the months have gone on, I have seen all the seasons shift their colours from the depths of the browns in winter to the sparkle of the spring when catkins dance before me. Then, in high summer, the energy of the place changed. I began to seek out different places and to get excited about tracing the river from the tinkling of the smallest trace of water at Gear Mill out and around Frenchman’s [Creek] and finally to the big wide ocean. (Louise McClary 2011)
Your Green Voice is comprised of a collection of these paintings for sale, along with a display of sketchbook drawings from the year of McClary’s engagement culminating in this exhibition. It is an opportunity to experience the beautiful surroundings of Kestle Barton in Spring, in the gardens and circular walk from Helford to Frenchman’s Creek where we are situated. And to experience all the seasons on the gallery walls: a chance to find your ‘green voice’ and something to shout about!
