The Jewel in the Town – The Ruby Years, Fosse Gallery at 40!
Thursday June 25, 2020
You know that eerie feeling when you realise some things in life are just, well, meant to be? From the moment I started visiting the Fosse Gallery, in the early 1980’s with my mother Nesta, I had a profound sense that I had secretly arrived. Arrived at a place that was going to become like my second home, let alone my spiritual one. But that is what happened, even though I then knew nothing about the art world; I had taken up my place at drama school, I was just 17.
Opened in 1980 by Gerard O’ Farrell and Brian Sinfield, the gallery dealt in Victorian watercolours before establishing its reputation in the Modern British Field. By the mid 1980’s a great partnership had begun between O‘Farrell and former fashion designer turned art dealer, Don Steyn. The gallery went from strength to strength, specialising in Scottish painting and became an art mecca. I joined in a professional capacity in the mid 1990’s, had an exceptional teacher in Don Steyn and remain, twenty three years later, doing the job that I love.
Celebrating its 40th Anniversary year – hence the Ruby theme, I feel so proud of what the gallery has achieved and its continuing philosophy and outlook in today’s ever-changing art landscape. We shall never be an art supermarket, offering you a hundred different choices all at once! My pleasure is in selecting and staging curated exhibitions by talented emerging and established artists. Giving them a platform, supporting the value of and need for the Solo Exhibition, and the benefits of being a community that embraces artists, buyers and enthusiasts alike. The gallery is here to welcome, share, experience, stimulate and to enrich the senses of all who visit.
For this celebratory exhibition I asked twenty Fosse Artists to paint, based on the ideas of Ruby and anniversary; included also is the work of the late Scottish artist Michael Scott representing a little something from the past.
The Fosse Gallery remains an art beacon, a shining light established here in Stow on the Wold four decades ago; the Jewel in the Town!
Sharon Wheaton 2020