CHRISTMAS EXHIBITION
Paintings, Prints, Ceramics and Sculpture
by Gallery and C20th Artists
25 November - 22 December
TOBIT ROCHE
28 - 18 November 2023
We are delighted to be presenting the sixth solo exhibition of paintings by Tobit Roche at The Art Stable. It is always wonderful to have Tobit’s romantic paintings covering the gallery walls, conveying so well his passion for nature and beauty. In this exhibition, the colours are heightened, and the focus will be on the mountains of India, as well as our own smaller, but much loved, Hambledon Hill.
As a teenager growing up in India, I was often exposed to magical mountainscapes, particularly when journeying to the Himalaya, and its foothills or travelling by train through the Aravalli Range in Rajasthan. These memories have stayed with me, inspiring many subsequent visits, and not least turning India for me into a kind of spiritual home.
In these recent paintings, I’ve tried to reconnect with this landscape of memories, and it is within the hills and mountains of India, that I find a compelling vehicle for self expression.
JOHN RIDGEWELL (1937-2004)
28 October - 18 November 2023
John Ridgewell was an Essex native, who studied alongside David Hockney and R.B. Kitaj at the Royal College of Art, before leaving to become a professional artist and occasional tutor. From an early, successful show at the New Arts Centre in 1962 (from which the Government Collection bought Deserted Harbour) Ridgewell exhibited widely during his lifetime. He and his family moved around England, from Yorkshire to Suffolk, via Dorset, his surroundings creeping into and influencing his paintings. From the gestural, heavier treatment of paint in his student days, inspired by the solid clay cliffs of the Yorkshire coast, his works became lighter in terms of colour, but more intensely intricate in their subject matter. Their delicacy was built up with brushes and a palette knife, and one can see the marks of his working in the paint itself.