RONA GROup OF ARtIStS IMAGINE - The Rona Gallery · RONA GROup OF ARtIStS IMAGINE LANGHAM GALLERY...
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RONA GROup OF ARtIStS
IMAGINE
LANGHAM GALLERY
12th to 23rd June 2012
the paintings in this show by eight artists
(including overleaf, a special focus on the
painter Lee Madgwick) reveal a fascinating
variety of innate styles and contrasting
approaches - ranging from poetic hyper-realism
to evocative impressionism to a fresh childlike
naiveté.
An example of the first of these approaches is
Then and Now, a subtly contemplative painting
by Michael Kidd. Here, St. paul's Cathedral's
ornate, curvilinear form is seen reflected (and
scintillatingly abstracted) in the flat, extensive
glass facade of a modern office block. Kidd also
portrays a spare rural scene (Five Fields) of
entrancingly diverse colours and patterns, and
the wooden breakers on Whitstable beach as a
range of dazzling kinetic shapes.
using only very fine watercolour brushes, and
eschewing the use of pen and pencil, Varsha
Bhatia delineates the exterior of the Houses of
parliament with immaculate intricacy. the
building's perpindicular Gothic-style detailing is
set against a lucid, pale blue sky, and reflected
in the shimmering thames below.
Louis Turpin's evocatively impressionistic
paintings are set within the three river valleys
which all meet at Rye in Sussex. One picture
focuses on a vibrant, predominantly red vessel
moored in Rye harbour at low tide, with a view
towards boat-sheds and variegated small historic
buildings in the town above amid bleak wintry
branches. His painting of two cows in a Rolling
Landscape celebrates the slow rural pace and
deliciously colourful fecundity of an East Sussex
valley scene.
Alfred Daniels has returned to the rich (and
peatily aromatic) terrain of the Scottish whisky
industry in his painting of Glenfiddich Distillery.
Here, the motion of full whisky barrels being
rolled onto a truck by robust local workers is
choreographed with elegant simplicity.
In Christopher Hall's painting of a distant view
of the walled medieval provencal village of
taulignan, the pale honey-coloured stone, and
the green terraces of vines, are complemented by
enchanting cool tones of vast swathes of
lavender. Margaret Loxton's paintings,
portraying monumental French folk harvesting
grapes in golden-hued landscapes, are full of
earthy merriment and sensual felicities.
In Martin Leman's picture, Tulips and Apples,
the mass of white tulip heads appears as a
brilliant cornucopia against a stark black
backdrop. A red and a green apple on a tabletop
are painted with distinctive naïve charm.
RONA Group of Artists
IMAGINE
RONA GROUP OF ARTISTS
The Rona Group of Artists is renowned for its exhibitions marked by a sophisticated,
highly individualistic vision which today has come to characterise its unique style.
For over twenty-five years, RONA was based in a gallery in London’s Mayfair, and now
exhibits several times a year at the Langham Gallery in Bloomsbury.
14. ‘Then and Now’ Michael Kidd
Lee Madgwick – who was born in King's Lynn,
Norfolk and now lives in Ely, Cambridgeshire –
has always been entranced by the sometimes
eery, luminous spaciousness of East Anglia –
which he describes as 'a mostly low-lying flat
landscape, so vast but one with real intimacy.' As
a child he 'always had pencil or pen in hand'; as
a teenager he enjoyed depicting local buildings
with intricate realism. After studying design at
Norwich University College of the Arts, he
launched into painting around 2004, 'tried some
landscapes – trees and hills – and painted one
house', then found, to his surprise, that a
sublimely surreal lyricism began to creep in.
He likes to journey around Norfolk (with its
'rustic, edgy feel'), Suffolk (with its 'rich history,
so many variations and accents') and
Cambridgeshire, sometimes venturing further
afield to favourite terrains such as Yorkshire and
Cornish moors and dales. On these trips, he takes
lots of photographs and enjoys 'going off the
beaten track' where his 'fascination with anything
derelict or abandoned' is sometimes satiated in
magical encounters with, say, dilapidated
vehicles or odd bits of rusting detritus in fields
(such as three toddlers' tricycles once seen
ambiguously abandoned within a crop circle,
though perhaps, in this instance – the subject of
a painting – the children had simply gone off to
play in the woods) or buildings like a 'stunning
16th century Norfolk farmhouse, completely
abandoned fifty years ago, with enormous
cracks, and surrounded by weeds, with trees
growing out of the exposed basement area'.
His painting Guarding the Realm – depicting an
entirely imaginary white stucco Victorian
townhouse curiously re-located in a remote rural
setting, and, even more bizarrely, surrounded by
a drawbridge-less moat – invites from the viewer
what the artist calls 'many unanswered questions.
In all my work, it's important for the viewer to
come up with their own narrative. I've always
liked stories with lots of mystery and make-
believe but there has to be something you can
relate to definitely at the same time, like a
familiar image in a strange landscape.' (It is
unsurprising to learn that Madgwick greatly
appreciates the macabre, Gothic tales and poetry
of the American Edgar Allan Poe, and that he is
transfixed by the post-apocalyptic wastelands –
barely inhabited by traumatised survivors – in
gripping, harrowing novels by J.G. Ballard and
Cormac McCarthy). Titles of his paintings he
counts as highly significant; finding them, he
says, 'tends to take time. They add another
element.' The title Guarding the Realm may
make a viewer ruminate on the building's
possible owner: 'a paranoid little Englander
perhaps, with a shotgun for intruders, with no
drawbridge to let in the world beyond.'
'I've always liked a fairly dark fairy-tale take in
stories, films and books I've read', and this
opaque magic is reflected in his paintings' 'very
moody settings, dark, ominous-looking clouds,
with a soft glow or a tint of light.' His brooding
skies are painted with water-based oils, squeezed
from tubes, then manipulated with fingers:
mainly titanium white, but then overlaid with
grey and black. He says he simply 'stumbled on
this technique, this way of making interesting
cloud effects'. The remainder of each painting is
painted with brushes in acrylic.
Using a deliberately attenuated palette adds to,
and accentuates, what he calls 'the story element.
I don't want to overbear with colours. I love
earthy colours, nothing false or man-made, love
greens especially but I like to keep green as
subtle as possible. It depends on what light is
hitting it; for instance, I like a yellow-green tone,
rather than a bluey-green one, when it's been
pouring down.' He's taken subtle pleasure in
evoking spidery cracks on stucco, and the damp
mossiness staining the facade of the spooky
house in Guarding the Realm.
A key, recurrent theme is an imaginative
encounter with an inexplicably stranded or
seemingly forsaken metallic artefact in a rural
MAGICAL ENCOUNTERS:
THE ART OF LEE MADGWICK
setting. The pivotal
balustrade-like form placed
with elegant centred
symmetry in his painting
Play in the Glade, a deserted
playground roundabout
whose patina is like
beautifully weathered copper
verdigris, suggests the ghost
of a human presence, with
'arms radiating. There may
be mischievous children
hiding or playing in the trees
beyond. It feels like you're
being watched. I don't like
my paintings to be too dark, I
like a certain element of
mischievous humour. The
birch trees here [with their
shimmering silvery
gradations] were very
interesting to paint; they
reflect light but also the
intimations of night. There is
just this inkling of a path into
the woods, one you feel you've just stumbled
upon.'
He loves 'the way history and nature quickly take
over places such as abandoned fun fairs and
theme parks, leaving [instead of noisy mayhem]
just peace and quiet'. In his painting, An Ocean
Far and Free, it seems that the rusting buoy, so
poignantly and enigmatically marooned on
oceanic landscape waves of treeless Scottish
moors, is listening out for unknown
communications from outer space. The buoy is
partly perhaps inspired by a World War One ruin
he once saw, an enormous, gramophone-like
object in isolated countryside. The uncanny
displacement of this inexplicable object shows
an affinity with Magritte's wittily surreal
pictures, and the characteristic expansive (quite
cinematic-like) panorama here is somewhat akin
to those seen in paintings by Caspar David
Friedrich, the 19th century German Romantic
painter, much admired by Madgwick.
He says he 'likes the idea of human presence in
a painting though you don't need actually to see
a person or figure – as long as you know they are
not far away.' In The Orient, one carriage of a
curvilinear Art Deco-era train has somehow
landed in a field, engine-less, a kind of 'post
apocalyptic getaway with dishevelled chipboard,
all mouldy and grimy, and a door to the right
made up from a corrugated iron fence with, over
time, very weakened graffiti.' Human presence
is suggested by small details in the picture: a
little ladder giving access to the carriage, a white
cup deposited in a corner, what he calls a
'mischievous hint' of a path through high, bouncy
grasses portrayed with myriad, feathery
brushtrokes which are deliberately slightly out-
of-focus, so that the viewer penetratingly
focusses on the transfigured railway carriage.
Madgwick says it is entirely up to the viewer to
determine the story behind this mysterious and
disquietingly serene scene, to choose whether it
has a 'melancholy or happy narrative'.
PHILIP VANN
Philip Vann is author of Face to Face: British
Self-Portraits in the Twentieth Century, and
several books on modern British artists. He lives
in Cambridge.
29. Play in the Glade Lee Madgwick
30. ‘Coldacre Barn’ Lee Madgwick
27. ‘An Ocean Far and Free’ Lee Madgwick
26. 'The Accomplishment' Lee Madgwick
28. ‘The Orient’ Lee Madgwick
32. ‘Stranded Delivery’ Lee Madgwick
25. ‘Guarding the Realm’ Lee Madgwick
detail
1. ‘Houses of Parliament’
Varsha Bhatia
34. ‘Rolling Landscape’ Louis Turpin
8. ‘Lavender, Taulignan’ Christopher Hall
33. ‘Harbour, Low Tide’ Louis Turpin
20. ‘Tulips and Apples’ Martin Leman
16. ‘Five Fields, Cotswolds’ Michael Kidd
15. ‘Whitstable Breakers’ Michael Kidd
5. ‘Glenfiddich’ Alfred Daniels
21. ‘Grape Harvest, Chambolle Musigny’ Margaret Loxton
22. ‘Collecting the Grapes’ Margaret Loxton
Varsha Bhatia
Varsha Bhatia was born in Bombay in 1956 and
graduated from Bombay University’s Sir
J.J.College of Architecture in 1978. She moved to
England in 1982 and has exhibited at the Royal
Society of British Artists and Royal Watercolour
Society Sunday Times Exhibition.She was recipient
of the Frank Herring Award for Architectural
Painting in 2002, and a Winsor & Newton Award
in 2004.
alfred daniels
Alfred Daniels was born in London's East End in
1924. In the late 1940s he studied at the Royal
College of Art, London; as a young graduate, he
toured Florence, Venice, Ravenna and Siena, where
he was deeply impressed by the Italian Primitives.
His award-winning murals (1952-4) at
Hammersmith Town Hall, depicting life on the
Thames, are regarded as a modern classic. His
much admired 1997 exhibition ‘Spirit of Scotland’
at RONA Gallery was a celebration of his tour of
the great whiskey distillers. He has been a regular
contributor to Royal Acadamy Summer exhibitions.
ChristOPher hall
Christopher Hall was born in Sussex in 1930 and
studied at the Slade School of Art. Since first
visiting Italy in 1954, he has enjoyed exploring
remote continental regions, discovering, and
depicting, enchantingly remote villages and
archetypal landscapes. His work is represented in
collections of the Arts Council, the Museum of
London, Barclays Bank, the National Library of
Wales, Shell UK and the Ashmolean Museum,
Oxford. He was elected RBA in 1988 and to the
Royal Cumbrian Academy in 1994.
MiChael Kidd
Born in London in 1937, Michael Kidd studied at
the Royal College of Art in the late 1950s. Fellow
pupils included the now-renowned film director
Ridley Scott and the painter David Hockney, both
of whom made a strong impression on him.
He went on to become an award-winning
television commercials maker but returned to
painting in 1981. Since his seminal exhibition,
The Genius of the Place in 2000 at RONA Gallery,
he has devoted all his time to painting. He has
become appreciated for his ability to evoke the
sometimes disquieting and surreal essence of a
particular place.
lee MadGWiCK
Lee Madgwick was born in King’s Lynn in 1980. In
2009 he won the Best in Show, Eastern Open,
King’s Lynn Arts Centre, and in 2010 the Woodhay
Gallery Award at the RBA Annual Exhibition. He
exhibited in the Royal Academy Summer
Exhibition in 2009.
Martin leMan
Martin Leman studied at Worthing School of Art
and the Central School of Art and Design, London.
After working as a designer and illustrator, he
started painting full-time in the 1960s. He shows
regularly at the Royal Academy Summer
Exhibition, The Mall Galleries and London’s
Bankside Gallery. He became a member of the
Royal Society of British Artists in 2007, and an
Associate of the Royal Watercolour Society in
2010.
MarGaret lOxtOn
Margaret Loxton was born in Middlesex in 1938.
She has always felt a deep kinship with farmers –
and she herself worked on the land for many years
before, in 1981, embarking on a full-time painting
career. Regular travels through regions of France
have resulted in several series of paintings of
paysan life, farmers, vineyard workers and café
habitués. There have been two books devoted to her
paintings, ‘Travels through Burgundy’ (1991) and
‘Provence’ (1993), with text by Peter Mayle.
lOuis turPin
Louis Turpin was born in London in 1947. He
studied Fine Art at Guildford and Falmouth College
of Art. After graduating he worked for several years
as a film-maker. In 1974 he moved to Sussex and
began painting full time. He is also a musician
playing blues-based guitar at venues around the
Sussex region. His paintings are set within the three
beautiful valleys of the Rivers Brede, Tillingham
and Rother which all meet at Rye.
VARSHA BHATIA
1. ‘Houses of Parliament’ Watercolour 12 by 24 inches2. ‘St Paul’s and Millennium Bridge’ Watercolour 11 by 19 inches3. ‘Great Hall, Lincoln’s Inn’ Watercolour 18 by 37 inches4. ‘Middle Temple Hall’ Watercolour 18 by 32 inches
ALFRED DANIELS
5. ‘Glenfiddich’ Acrylic on board 16 by 24 inches6. ‘Dufftown Cooperage’ Acrylic on board 16 by 21 inches7. ‘Old Billingsgate Market’ Acrylic on board 17 by 22 inches
CHRISTOPHER HALL
8. ‘Lavender, Taulignan’ Oil on board 11 by 20 inches9. ‘Avenue in Gerbery’ Oil on board 15 by 9 inches10. ‘Les Tilleville Café’ Oil on board 12 by 8 inches11. ‘Monpazier, Dordogne’ Oil on board 12 by 14 inches12. ‘Nizas, Languedoc’ Oil on board 10 by 13 inches13. ‘Monbazillac’ Oil on board 9 by 11 inches
MICHAEL KIDD
14. ‘Then & Now’ Acrylic on board 24 by 32 inches15. ‘Whitstable Breakers’ Acrylic on board 24 by 32 inches16. ‘Five Fields, Cotswolds’ Acrylic on board 24 by 32 inches17. ‘The Gherkin’ Acrylic on board 24 by 32 inches18. ‘Chateau Latour Dovecote’ Acrylic on board 24 by 32 inches
MARTIN LEMAN
19. ‘Tulips’ Acrylic on board 14 by 14 inches20. ‘Tulips and Apples’ Acrylic on board 17 by 12 inches
MARGARET LOXTON
21. ‘Grape Harvest, Chambolle Musigny’ Oil on board 16 by 24 inches22. ‘Collecting the Grapes’ Oil on board 20 by 16 inches23. ‘Grape Harvesters Rest’ Oil on board 20 by 16 inches24. ‘Three Ladies of Gevrey Chambertin’ Oil on board 20 by 16 inches
LEE MADGWICK
25. ‘Guarding the Realm’ Oil & acrylic on canvas 40 by 40 inches26. ‘The Accomplishment’ Oil & acrylic on canvas 40 by 40 inches27. ‘An Ocean Far and Free’ Oil & acrylic on canvas 32 by 48 inches28. ‘The Orient’ Oil & acrylic on canvas 32 by 48 inches29. ‘Play in the Glade’ Oil & acrylic on canvas 28 by 28 inches30. ‘Coldacre Barn’ Oil & acrylic on canvas 32 by 48 inches31. ‘The Noble Oak’ Oil & acrylic on canvas 40 by 40 inches32. ‘Stranded Delivery’ Oil & acrylic on canvas 40 by 40 inches
LOUIS TURPIN
33. ‘Harbour, Low Tide’ Oil on canvas 28 by 26 inches34. ‘Rolling Landscape’ Oil on canvas 28 by 26 inches35. ‘Great Dixter’ Oil on canvas 28 by 26 inches36. ‘The Glasshouse, Scampston’ Oil on canvas 28 by 26 inches37. ‘The Glasshouse’ Indian ink 20 by 20 inches
For further information please contact Dominic at [email protected] telephone 0207 242 0010
LIST OF EXHIBITS
LANGHAM GALLERY34 Lamb’s Conduit Street, London WC1N 3LEt: 020 7242 0010 e. [email protected]
Mon - Fri 10am - 6pm Sat.10am - 4pm
33. ‘Harbour, Low Tide’ (detail) Louis Turpin