Sea and Coast Exhibition at Musgrove Gallery

There is a taste of the seaside Taunton's Musgrove Park Hospital where the latest art exhibition in the Musgrove Gallery features images of the sea and coast.

Artists have always been drawn to the sea; for its peace, its wildness,

its dramas. In this area of the country we are never far from a

coastline.

The artists in this exhibition - Tess Armitage, Kathy Ramsay Carr,

Vanessa Gardiner, Paul Jones, Janette Kerr, Simon Ledson, Caroline

McMillan Davey - are all local to the region. However, the coasts

depicted extend from the Shetland Islands to Zennor Head in South

Cornwall.

Janette Kerr, travelling north to the Shetlands, is inspired by the

forces of the North Atlantic seas, many of these works done on the spot

on the shores. The violence of a winter storm is captured in virtually

abstract images where the line between sea and sky is indecipherable,

the spume and spray seemingly driven across the picture surface by the

force of nature.

On the other side of the spectrum are the calm seas of Simon Ledson. In his images he captures the undulating movement of the water's surface with the minimum of colour to distract the eye. These are quietly contemplative images that gently still the mind.

Animated by colour are the impressionist paintings of Tess Armitage and Caroline McMillan Davey.  Their coastal scenes, with beaches and

estuaries, follow in a long tradition of British coastal landscape art.

The paintings blend together colour, light and atmosphere with a spirit

of joie de vivre.

Kathy Ramsay Carr combines similar impressionist concepts with swirling paint strokes that suggest the energies of wind and sea. Though not as wildly abstract as Janette Kerr, Carr captures windswept coasts with her own exuberance.

By way of contrast are the more graphic and apparently stylised coastal

scenes of Vanessa Gardiner and Paul Jones. Gardiner pares down the

landscape into its basic shapes. Her refined images are not simple to

do, their success hinging on the delicate balance of form and colour.

Conversely, Paul Jones's Jurassic coast is complexly patterned, with

prime focus on the forms and textures of rock surfaces. These

semi-abstracted images reveal Jones's familiarity with, and affection

for, this specific coast.

The exhibition is in the Musgrove Gallery, First Floor, Queens

Building, Musgrove Park Hospital, Taunton TA1 5DA.  It is open during

regular hospital hours and entry is free.  It runs until July 31st.