Original Lithographic Posters

Oil on board

Oil on Board

Oil on Board

Oil on Canvas

There is a fundamental challenge facing any artist who wishes to convey a religious dimension to life. I believe Gary Bunt addresses that challenge in a fresh and fascinating way. There is something different about his work which draws and affects people deeply. But first we need to understand the nature of the challenge he faces. All religions claim there is more to life than we can touch and feel; that there is another reality both beyond and deep within things. This reality is not just one thing amongst others, not an item in the world of items. It is difficult enough to convey this reality in words, which are always as misleading as they are true. How much more difficult it is to do so in lines and colours? For many Christians, especially those who belong to one of the Orthodox churches, the most successful way of meeting the challenge has been in icons. These seek to convey something numinous in a non-literalistic way, and lead the viewer into prayer. Something of that iconic tradition was still present in Western art in the work of artists like Duccio and Giotto. But with them and other artists of the early Renaissance there developed new techniques of perspective making it possible to depict tangible reality more as the eye sees it. Together with this, as for example in the work of Mantegna, there developed the desire to depict historical scenes as they were. The result has been the whole highly skilled tradition of Western art. But was something lost on the way? Does that art succeed in conveying, not just an imagined life of Jesus for example, but that other dimension of life? For many people, if it did once, it no longer does so. Paradoxically it was with the birth of Modernism about 1913 that new possibilities for religious art opened up. For modernism represented a radical break with literalism and tried to convey something more than what the eye sees. It is no accident that very many of those modernists were deeply religious people, albeit of an unorthodox kind, though some, like Rouault, were profoundly Christian in their work. There is however another way of trying to convey that religious dimension. It can be seen for example in the work of Albert Herbert (1925-2008). Herbert originally painted in the style of American abstractionism, but learnt to see and draw again as a child. Jesus said “Unless you become like little children…” Gary Bunt similarly has learnt to see life with a sense of wonder and simplicity. But he does so in a highly skilled manner combining verse, picture and text, each re-enforcing the other to convey something more going on than the eye can see. He manages this effect through the complex interaction of five relationships. The dog and his friend the man ; the dog and the reader; the man and the object of his search; the relationship of the landscape to dog, man and viewer; the relationship of the text to both story, picture and reader. In each scene that network of relationships can be seen at work, suffusing the whole and conveying a sense of something important going on. The landscapes in Gary’s paintings are particularly arresting and vibrant, creating a mood in which the whole is set. These alone often manage to convey that mysterious other beyond and within what is seen, whether the scene is one of the countryside or the sea. The way the man and his dog are depicted in relationship to the landscape is also beautifully judged in reflecting a particular mood. At the same time the relationship of the dog to the man is also shown in all its charming and affecting variety. Just look at the first three paintings, for example, and note the different pose of the dog in each one. These are not just illustrations, they convey a relationship; what is going on in two minds and the interplay between them. This is a work for mature adults which children will also enjoy. It is also a work for children which will kindle again in adults that sense of wonder which they had once, and lost awhile; what T.S. Eliot once called “A condition of complete simplicity.”

Published to mark an extraordinary twenty-five year period of carving into materials, this book documents Halima Cassell’s development as an artist and the biographical journey of her artistic practice. Cassell is an artist of consummate skill and ingenuity. Her distinctive style integrates bold forms with an infinite variety of deeply carved, complex patterns, where form meets shadow. She draws inspiration from geometry found in nature, her surroundings and from her own heritage, all of which have become the basis of Cassell’s visual vocabulary. This important publication was made possible with part funding from the Arts Council. It is a record of the creative output of one of today’s finest sculptors, whose work is held in leading national and international collections, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Hepworth Wakefield and Birmingham Art Gallery. It is also the biographical journey of an artist’s creative development, from her earliest creative beginnings to her significant, ongoing installation, Virtues of Unity.

Bronze Edition 3 of 8

Hand Carved Clay

Oil on Linen

Egg Tempera

Egg Tempra on Panel

Egg Tempera

Egg Tempera

Egg Tempera on Board

Egg Tempera on Board

Egg Tempera on Board

Egg Tempera on Board

Oil and pigment on paper

Oil and Pigment on paper

Oil and Pigment on paper

Oil and pigment on paper

Oil and Pigment on paper

Oil and Pigment on Paper

Oil and Pigment on Paper

Oil an pigment on paper

Oil and pigment on paper

A Northern School Revisited by Peter Davies is a revised and updated version of his 1989 book A Northern School – Lancashire Artists of the Twentieth Century, and documents the landscape of what we might broadly call the Northern art scene, thereby showing the enduring appeal of art from the north west of England (covering many cities and towns in Lancashire, Merseyside and Greater Manchester). In an era of increasing globalization, with a general shift of attention to the international art market, the regional often becomes overlooked, and, worse still, rendered invisible. The publication of Davies' book is especially important in this context as it presents a restatement of the importance of Northern art in the narrative of British art and moves beyond the popular but limited perception of L.S. Lowry as representative of the Northern tradition. It also inadvertently underscores the innovations and contributions of regional art 'schools' in other areas of Britain, including Cornwall (the St Ives School), Glasgow (the Glasgow School), and London (the Euston Road School), to British social history and heritage. With a wealth of historical detail attained from the Manchester Academy of Fine Art archives, Davies builds up a vivid picture of the life and times of numerous artists, groups and bodies who were connected with the North West, which included artists who were variously born there, studied in Northern art schools, or worked and exhibited there. This expanded sense of the Northern is important as it provides the rationale for including artists as far apart as the Welsh-born Augustus John, who taught at the University of Liverpool, and Picasso, an exhibition of whose work was shown at the end of the war at Manchester City Art Gallery. We learn about the various personal and institutional connections that aided the development of a recognizable body of work that came to be regarded as Northern art, which is characterized by the evocation of a sense of the North, whether through the representation of actual or imaginary senses of place, local events such as market day, or sporting events, and the representations of working-class life. Many artists combined or melded a 'topographical record with the collective memory' (p. 189) of the past, to use a phrase of Davies' with reference to Alan Lowndes but one that can be taken to have more general application to other artists. While being concerned with charting the influences and interests of the chosen artists, Davies avoids parochi-alism by showing how artists were engaged with currents in the mainstream , whether in the form of art movements, such as pop art, or events, such as the Festival of Britain in 1951.

Oil on Canvas

Oil on Canvas

Oil on canvas

Oil on Board,

Oil on Board

Oil on Board,

Oil on Canvas

Oil on Canvas

Oil on canvas

Oil on canvas

Oil on Canvas

Oil on Canvas

Pencil

Oil on canvas

Oil on canvas

Oil on canvas on wooden board

Dye, Acrylic and mixed media on calico on board

Oil on linen

Oil and oil stick on canvas on wooden board

Oil on linen

Gouache, watercolour, acrylic and in ink on card

Oil and oil stick on canvas on panel

Ceramic

Ceramic

Ceramic

Ceramic

Ceramic

ink, wash and pencil on paper

Ink and pencil on paper

Screen Print

Gouache