Tore Gallery Christmas Exhibition

27 Nov 2012 in Highland, Showcase, Visual Arts & Crafts

Tore Gallery, Tore, until 23 December 2012

TORE Gallery’s latest exhibition marks both an ending and a beginning.

FOLLOWING this Christmas exhibition the gallery will close its doors after nine years, allowing owner/artist Clare Blois time and space to focus exclusively on her own work. As part of a spectrum of private local galleries catering to different needs in the Highlands it is sure to be missed, both as an exhibition and concert venue.

Denise Davis - Greenfinch

Denise Davis - Greenfinch

However, the gallery will retain an online presence with a co-operative of selected artists and it will be exciting to see the trajectory of Blois’s own work with a new chapter of her practice beginning. In reflecting on the context and successes of the gallery, Blois commented on how Tore had “filled a gap” in responding to a need within the local art scene and how it “would leave a gap”; in its commitment to show work by artists who didn’t have an outlet elsewhere, to support local artists at different stages of development and to encourage the buying of art; offering affordable pieces minus the intimidation often felt in private gallery spaces.

Although solo statements often become obscured in an environment crammed with creative offerings there is typically some strong work featured in this final show, which includes work by David Body, Miriam Smith, Suzanne Gyseman, Gillian Pattinson, Helen Robertson, Janis Fleming, Christine O’Keefe, Kitty Watt, Isabell Dickson, Ben Southern, John Nicholson, Linda Smith, Margaret Cowie, Frances Baxter and many others.

Denise Davis’s magnificent flights in abstraction, Greenfinches I and II (Acrylic), display the delicacy and strength of drawn marks together with a dynamic palette of contrasting acidic green and red in two striking vertical compositions. Her visceral treatment of the figure and exploration of the picture plane are brought convincingly to bear in these works; colour and mark beautifully balanced with signature energy and poise. At its best the integrity of the artist’s work resoundingly shines through, driven equally by response to the subject through abstraction and grappling with the chosen medium.

Abstraction (Hen) is another fine example; a composition of white, brown, cadmium red, black and grey that feels stripped to its bones, the artist actively exploring plastic elements in the crafting of the image together with psychological and emotional weight of raw pigment and associative form. Davis’s paintings have a distinct sculptural quality that together with her unflinching pursuit of the human mark sets her work apart from the regional obsession with pictorial landscape.

Michael Stuart Green - In Redcastle Woods

Michael Stuart Green - In Redcastle Woods

Michael Stuart Green’s command of traditional and digital printmaking techniques have consistently featured at Tore and his layered treatment of colour, form and design are beautifully represented by Red Castle 1(Lino cut 1/6), a superb composition of sky, stone and foliage in russet, orange, pink, cream and green.

In Red Castle Woods (Lino cut 1/5) the progression of colour and tone elevates the viewer’s experience of an image bursting with light and life. The successive layering of acidic yellow and green against the blue/ black undergrowth reaching heightened tonality at the top of the image, lead the eye and mind into the work in a similar way to the shining path in the foreground. Stuart Green presents the viewer not just with a scene of a wood but the possibility of a state of being in relation to it. The construction of the image and the artist’s technical ability bears a direct relationship to the depth of experience offered by the subject within the picture plane.

Ronald Lawson’s watercolours Boreray and the Stacks and Lochmaddy, North Uist are striking in their technique; the first in its skilful striation of rock and the textural treatment of a thin band of steely blue ocean, which almost feels like collage or a layer of print process, and the second in its depiction of a great immovable sky of planar grey, the boldly defined low roof and horizon contrasted with feathered edges of thatch. The juxtaposition of detail and definition are a wonderful combination however the reverse of this display reveals a formulaic approach to subject and perhaps a fortuitous warning that the artist should let process lead in the future development of his work.

Clare Blois - Bright Fields Late Summer

Clare Blois - Bright Fields Late Summer

Having recently exhibited at the Mall Galleries in London as part of the Discerning Eye Exhibition 2012, it is pleasing to see Clare Blois’s work featured in this final show. Bright Fields Late Summer (Oil) with its vibrant palette of layered impasto in yellow, blues and greens, accented with red and orange, draws the eye into the curvature of the field in a sweep of colour and energetic brushstrokes. It is a joyous evocation of the season in its final moments and an exciting precursor for work to come.

Blois has contributed significantly to the local arts community in her management of Tore Gallery as a venue supporting recreational, semi-professional and professional artists. The final concert event on Sunday 9th December with James Ross, Musick Fyne and The Marvel of Peru is an apt celebration of the venue which will hopefully continue to be utilised for arts events in the future.

© Georgina Coburn, 2012

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