West-country artist LAUREL KEELEY’s paintings and stoneware pots reflect her love of gardens through the different seasons;  her fascination with how different they can appear between leafy spring and stark winter. Minimal but assured brushstrokes and sensitive use of colour give her paintings a contemplative aspect.  Her pots in contrast intrigue with their descriptive incised marks and rich slips, conveying a sense of narrative - a walk through nature around the surface of each vessel.

A nationally popular artist, TESSA NEWCOMB is attracted to the bizarre and unexpected in everyday life and in particular to the relationship of people with their allotments. Living in rural Suffolk is ‘magical territory’ she says  for observing the vagaries of life and individual concepts of ‘how to grow things’.  Most of all she delights in sharing their joy in the changing seasons, the sowing and planting through to harvesting - and the many idiosyncratic ways of keeping pests at bay!  A subtle multi-layering of the oil paint, thinly applied, gives an inner radiance to her paintings, an awareness of what she calls “spaces and silences”.

This exhibition launches her book ‘The Adorable Plot’ in which her paintings, drawings and pithy writing celebrate the endless care and dedication shown by most allotment holders, along with their rare freedom of spirit and joy in the natural cycles of growing.

Order and symmetry in the decoration of KATRIN MOYE’s ceramics may stem from a legacy of the folk-art of her German and Scandinavian forbears which influenced her as a child.  Nature is as important a source of inspiration to her as it is to Laurel and Tessa, but where they let its random wildness flow into their work, Katrin creates a formal pattern from leaves, plants, seeds and trees with which to decorate hers.  She uses paper-cut resists, trailing, sponging and brush painting to apply the slips and underglazes to her finely thrown white earthenware.  The originality and skill shown in her work earned her an Arts Council award last year and the ‘Best in Show’ distinction at this year’s Contemporary Craft Fair at Bovey Tracey.

DUIBHNE GOUGH has produced an enticing new collection of necklaces, bangles and earrings for this exhibition.  She sources rare and unusual semi-precious stones such as phosphosiderite, Peruvian pink opal, bezoar jasper, muscovite, Soochow jade.... interlinking them with silver or pearl beads.  Her pendants of beaten silver and gold add focus to other necklaces, often teamed with matching earrings.  She works the metals with a simple hammer in the time-honoured tradition of silversmiths and goldsmiths.  One of Duibhne’s great skills is the often unexpected but always appealing juxtaposition of colours and textures in the necklaces, giving each her personal signature.
Originally apprenticed to her father, Breon O’Casey, she has long since achieved recognition and success as a designer-jeweller in her own right.

(More images of Duibhne’s jewellery will be added here soon)

Jewellery by GUY ROYLE  and GINA COWEN is also on display in PASTORALE.

FOLLOWING the success of JOHN MALTBY’s exhibition ‘JUBILATION’ earlier this summer, he has completed a new collection of work which is currently on show here.
These are a few of the new sculptures ~ and more can be seen by request to gilly@yewtreegallery.com