Fircroft pulls out all the stops for yet another brilliant exhibition.
The Fircroft Summer Exhibition is bigger and better than ever this year. It’s always a pleasure just to visit the Taylor’s wonderful old Victorian home, let alone to immerse yourself in rooms full of original and wonderful works of art. Frank Taylor is a successful and prolific painter and every June he invites other artists to exhibit with him in his lovely home. His wife Christine prepares for the exhibition for months beforehand, liaising with artists whose work they admire.
Ceramics, jewellery, sculpture, drawings - everything is explored but I always linger longest by the paintings.
This year I am bowled over by Keith Morton’s oil paintings. As a frustrated oil painter myself, I can stare for hours at the deft work of an accomplished painter such as Morton. How can so many colours make up a bunch of beetroot and still look OK? Such is the skill of an artist who can see beyond the surface.
Frank Taylor is not afraid of colour - his paintings are bold, confident and each tells its own story. He has travelled extensively and his paintings and prints are inspired by the landscape, architecture, people and art of distant places.
On the 3D side, John Maltby is always popular - his ceramics are fun, quirky and are attracting a lot of red dots as always.
Lisa B Moorcroft, well know and much loved for her wonderful glassed ceramics, is the grand-daughter of William Moorcroft and the fourth generation of the famous firm of potters. She makes unique, colourful vases with designs based on flowers and creatures and specializes in slip trailing and under glaze colours with a lustre glaze - now collector’s items.
New this year are the wild and wacky metal works by Darrell Evanes - very Waterworld, and I love them. A couple of his pieces are currently exhibiting at The Lightbox in Woking.
Also beautiful to behold are outdoor sculptures by Zimbabwean sculptors that the Taylors have built relationship with over many years, helping many to gain significant recognition in the UK.
Some of these sculptures are massive, cast out of springstone, so called because by the Zimbabwean sculptors because the stone is so hard that the hammer springs back as they hit the chisel. There are also some huge pieces that look fab outdoors from sculptors nearer to home including Bristol-based Jo Jones whose piece ‘Hiding’ is simply beautiful. And don’t miss work by Harrogate metal sculptor, Steve Blaylock, who takes inspiration from nature, creating stunning metal versions of animals and plant life.
I particularly liked a serene sculpture by E. Sahondo called Head, a block of stone with a few swathes of hair and the simplest of faces - less is often more.
Just as I was exploring the garden and loving the range of sculpture styles it started to rain - a good excuse to back again next week.
The Fircroft Summer Exhibition runs until Sunday june 24th. Open daily from 11am to 5pm with late nights on Thursday until 8pm. Fircroft is off new road, on Albury heath. For more info call 01483 202333 or visit www.fircroft.info
