in the studio and other spaces within the ‘curtilage’ of…
Hamsey Place Farmhouse
Hamsey, Lewes
East Sussex BN8 5TB
Open 11am - 5pm Saturdays & Sundays 13th/14th and 20th/21st + Saturday 27th or by appointment at other times.
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‘ Since my last studio show in 2022 I have been working on a number of landscape painting projects. Alongside my usual exploration of material and pictorial space there is an emphasis on land use and agriculture, and my personal history of land-based work and leisure.
I will be showing paintings of Cornish lanes and fields where the lumpy broken landscape seems to blur the distinctions between bush, rock, cow, shed and cloud.
There will be paintings of views from the farmhouse windows here at Hamsey, hence the title Curtilage, that generations of farmers have pondered less for aesthetic pleasure than to check their work place and all that comes with the responsibility for land and stock.
I have also been painting the descendants of dairy cattle I worked with on a West Sussex farm over 40 years ago when the debates around land use, access and ownership seemed very different. I know it shouldn’t matter that there is some personal connection to subject, after all it is just an excuse to make a painting, and matters little to the viewer, but increasingly it does for me. So in this show there’s a lot of reflection, trying to work out what’s important and what to do next.
Finally I will be showing some ‘Herd’ paintings of cattle on a steep volcanic, New Zealand pasture, where the camouflaging patterns, flattened space and high vantage point relate both to the tipped up space of abstraction and the hunter gatherer’s view of cattle in the paintings at Lascaux.
The exhibition will be held in the studio and various other spaces within the ‘curtilage’ of Hamsey Place Farmhouse..’
Nick Bodimeade 2024
