THE spring exhibition White Cube One showcases work by British artist Rowena Comrie and sculptor Richard Thornton at Kunsthuis Gallery, at Dutch House, Mill Green Farm, Crayke, from Saturday to May 13.
Rowena Comrie continues to develop her dramatic and emotive painting style after 30 years as a professional artist, saying: "When Andre Breton described surrealism as ‘beyond space and time’, he introduced a liberating concept to artists to add new thoughts and feelings, seeking after a personal freedom in the aesthetic experience.
"I want to create artworks that liberate the personality, using the subconscious delights of chance possible in spontaneity and a consciously considered formal arrangement of colour and shape."
Rowena hope her paintings open up to viewers an alternative way of sensing life beyond the limits of nature, "where space and form create an alternative universe of ideas and suggestions that stimulate the imagination". "This aesthetic in my painting is informed by vibrating colour relationships and formal balancing," she says. "The tension between colour and shape offers the viewer both an immediate spontaneous response and considered intellectual reflection."
Orchid Two, by Richard Thornton
Richard Thornton, a professional sculptor and site-specific artist with 25 years experience, has completed more than 45 public art commissions for private, local authority and individual clients and exhibited at 30 gallery, garden and sculpture shows.
"Primarily I work in metal – stainless steel and bronze – which I use to ‘draw’ in space and interpret the world," he says. "Crafted with skill, my public sculptures are appreciated best as an element in a landscape, either urban or pastoral, where they create a dialogue with their setting, enhancing it with their sculptural presence.
"The sculptures I produce on a smaller scale for home, gallery and garden settings embody the same explorations of form, reflection and the themes of nature and science. My sculptures attain the grace of that most difficult synthesis, that of conjoining form and shape with the qualities of rhythm and lightness, thus mirroring the world around them."
The White Cube One show will run alongside Our eARTh, a nine-month exhibition showcasing 100-plus artists on the theme of climate change and the environment, at Kunsthuis Gallery. Both shows will be opened on Saturday from 3pm to 6pm; regular gallery opening hours are Wednesday to Sunday, 11am to 4pm.
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