Rosalind Lyons & Gareth Hugh Davies The Lineaments of Nature

By - 18/02/25

Private View: Sunday 2nd March 2025 – Noon – 4.00pm
The Exhibition continues until: Saturday 29th March 2025

Rosalind Lyons

This collection of paintings continues my preoccupation with the Tudor and Jacobean periods, and with creating imaginary portraits.

Rosalind Lyons - See How I am Bewitch'd - Oil on Board - 33 x 24 inches — Rosalind Lyons – See How I am Bewitch’d – Oil on Board – 33 x 24 inches

The word ‘lineaments’ is now mainly used in geology or topography to describe a linear feature in a landscape. But one dictionary definition, no longer in common use, is ‘A distinctive feature or characteristic, especially of the face.’ Influenced by the Renaissance painters, the figures in my paintings tend towards an idealised and ethereal appearance, rather than the imperfect lineaments of individual physiognomy. They are often ambiguous as regards age, time and place, and even gender. This uncertainty, this blurring of boundaries, makes their aesthetic perfection somehow disturbing rather than appealing. But, although their expression is fixed, the suggestion is that this is only a momentary state; they are potentially capable of profound expression.

Rosalind Lyons - To Yellow Autumn Turn’d - Oil on Board - 16 x 12 inches — Rosalind Lyons – To Yellow Autumn Turn’d – Oil on Board – 16 x 12 inches

I am also fascinated by the juxtaposition of the natural, living ‘likeness’ with the artificial; the intricate beauty of the embroidery and jewellery, and the decorative pattern of the elaborate costumes that often almost overwhelm the person wearing them, competing for the viewers’ attention.

Rosalind Lyons - A Sad Tale's Best for Winter - Oil on Board - 16 x 24 inches — Rosalind Lyons – A Sad Tale’s Best for Winter – Oil on Board – 16 x 24 inches

Locations in my work are rarely real, but two paintings show specific places in Cambridge, where I live. The Great Gate is the magnificent, recently restored entrance to Christ’s College, and To Yellow Autumn Turn’d shows a view across The Backs to King’s College Chapel. And the view through the window of Turn You Where Your Lady Is, is an inaccurate image of Venice, though the large boat is one I saw at the Regata Storica last year.

Gareth Hugh Davies

I’m interested in the the quiet drama that simple visual references can create. They can be read as meditations on the tensions between light and dark, the remote and the familiar.

Gareth Hughs Davies - From Garn Fawr - Oil on Canvas - 39 x 28 Inches — Gareth Hughs Davies – From Garn Fawr – Oil on Canvas – 39 x 28 Inches

Recurring arborial imagery, night scenes, and cloudscapes are the starting points for much of my work. The collision of opposite pictorial devices and the contrast between tonal elements reinforces this duality, and the play of light and dark becomes a play between layers of meaning.

What starts as an immediate response to a particular landscape can be transformed by continual reworking and re-examining, into something without topographical concerns, and a more personal response is allowed to develop.

Gareth Hughs Davies - Scapa Flow, Orkney - Oil on Canvas - 16 x 16 Inches — Gareth Hughs Davies – Scapa Flow, Orkney – Oil on Canvas – 16 x 16 Inches

Magritte called the power to evocate night and day in his ‘Empire of Light’ series of paintings, ‘poetry’.

This idea of ‘poetry’ underpins my approach to painting, the notion that the intangible can be suggested through the juxtaposition of form, colour and line. An idea of landscape, reimagined and remembered to convey feeling and a sense of a psychological space.