YORK artist Lesley Seeger will launch her new book and exhibition, Coming Home, this evening (December 2) at Pyramid Gallery in Stonegate, York, where she will be on hand to discuss her influences and the techniques of building images in layers.
Lesley will sign copies at the 6pm to 8.30pm event at Terry Brett's gallery, which has shown her work on several occasions and is proud to have taken a role in the book's production.
In the foreword to Lesley's "mid-career retrospective", Terry Brett describes Lesley's work as a "celebration of the pleasure of looking and seeing, and the art of conveying to others that pleasure".
York artist Lelsey Seeger in her studio
"It is joyous collection of riotous colours, lively patterns and Yorkshire scenes. And that is how I feel when just looking at the book. The actual paintings are mostly large canvases with richly layered paint. The book can never quite capture the experience of looking at the paintings, but it does very well at explaining it all. This is not just a catalogue of her art. It is a description of the mind of a true artist."
Coming Home, Lesley's first book, spans the past decade of her paintings as she tells her story and describes the development of her painting technique and how it changed when she moved out of the city and into the country at Huttons Ambo.
Her new surroundings have inspired her to paint outside and take the opportunity to adapt her decorative style to that of landscapes, as can be witnessed in the accompanying exhibition of framed prints and new paintings.
"When the world is rushing by, I am standing alone in a field, paints in bag, watching," says Lesley, who was born in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1958 and spent her formative years roaming free in the small village of Ponteland when it was still a quiet backwater.
Castle Howard, acrylic on board, by Lesley Seeger
Holidays were taken on the Scottish and Northumbrian coast, and on moving to North Yorkshire at the age of nine, she was immersed in landscape and the natural world, which made a lasting impression on her and became the main influence and inspiration for her painting.
Interested in capturing a sense of place, Lesley works in the first instance in "plein air", within the landscape. The work is then taken back to the studio to be developed. The result is a hybrid between the real and imagined, creating a narrative as though you are stepping into an unfinished story.
Her refined sense of colour, delicate mark making and imaginative re-interpretation of what she sees are hallmarks of her painting for more than 20 years now. The Pyramid exhibition features prints of many of the images in Lesley's book, her depictions of well-known places such as Castle Howard, Burton Agnes Hall and the Yorkshire Arboretum being imbued with her ethereal vision.
Lesley Seeger's painting mantra: ""If it looks good enough to eat, use it"
The new paintings on show feature Northumberland landmarks such as Bamburgh and Alnwick castles and Bamburgh beach, which make up part of her Special Places in the North collection.
Lesley has the perfect mantra for all that colour in her paintings. "If it looks good enough to eat, use it", she reasons, as palette and palate join in rare unison. For Lesley, there are no half measures, no skinny this, or low fat that, in her pantry of paint. Instead she loves the boldness of colour, applying it playfully, even flirtatiously, as she revels in the beauty around us.
Lesley Seeger's Coming Home exhibition runs at Pyramid Gallery, Stonegate, York, from December 2 to January 18. Coming Home, A Contemporary Colourist's Approach To English Landscape, is published by Quacks Books, York.
Adorn, jewellery by Yen at Pyramid Gallery
PYRAMID Gallery will accompany Lesley Seeger's exhibition with its Christmas Collection exhibition of handmade jewellery.
In the window during December, London jeweller Yen will take pride of place as the Stonegate gallery's Jeweller of the Month with her intricate silver work based on molecular structures that link together to form into earrings, necklaces or bracelets.
Along with Yen’s work, the Christmas Collection will feature more than 100 British jewellery designer/makers in a show featuring art glass, ceramics and animal sculpture.
New jewellery by Jane Macintosh, Catherine Hills, Jane Moore and Diana Porter will be on show and for sale, along with glass by Stuart Akroyd, Fiaz Elson, Crispian Heath and Jade Pinnell and ceramic sculpture by Peter Hayes, Paul Smith, Gin Durham, Blandine Anderson, Karen Fawcett, Penny Phillips, Jennie McCall and Robin Fox.
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