Event Categories: Exhibition

A plethora of colour, shape, texture and imagination.  The collection plunges the viewer into the shape of landscape, the quality remembered in the minds’ eye, familiar yet new.

Open 21st March 2025 – Closes 4^th May 2025

The late Jim Orme was a contemporary painter who mixed his paint to achieve rich surfaces in both his abstract and more representational work. In this show, it is impossible to represent the full range of his oeuvre where often recognisable motifs were apparent in the textured surfaces (aeroplanes, moths, birds) etc. Jim was has a fascination with flight, birds and insects.  Any living being that presented these gifts were  obsessively studied and catalogued in formed into his paintings. Much of his work was abstract and Jim had a strong interest in Minimalism a trope that is noticeable in the paintings.

Rob Moore has worked as a painter and printmaker for most of his life. Originally from Leicester, Rob is now living in North Yorkshire.

 “That he does not direct the viewer, but merely raises an arm and a finger and suggests a direction.’’ 

Like Jim, Rob enjoys the craft of painting and is obsessed by applying intricate paint marks in much of his abstract work. The paintings often have a feel for the landscapes he loves across the north. There are many works that include suggestions of places affected by rising sea levels due to climate change, a threat to the East Yorkshire and Humber coastlines.  Rob incorporates simplified shapes that suggest for example a submerged piece of land, a boat wreck exposed by a strong high tide. Rob is happy however for the viewer just to enjoy the colour, marks and shapes that he creates in the paintings.  He continues to curate exhibitions and organises the music gigs at The Old Parcels Office in Scarborough.

We have a new collection of ceramics by Barry Stedman to accompany the richness of Moore Orme exhibition.  Barry’s intention is to make colourful, dynamic forms that come out of a deep connection to the landscape. Often his ceramic art work is rooted in the directness and urgency of drawing outside; responding to the weather, drama, and life of the landscape.  Starting on the wheel or constructed with slabs, the red earthenware vessels are marked and altered, scored and handled, before being painted with layers of coloured slips and oxides, washes of vivid colour enhanced with a bright rich clear glaze.

Emma Price is an abstract and semi-abstract landscape painter, living and working in Surrey.

Emma’s work has recently described as:

 “It’s like Turner met Rothko and they had a child ”

Having lived in both England and Australia, Emma’s paintings are expressions of her emotions and visual memories of the natural landscapes within which she has lived and travelled. Her work depicts an abstraction – a stripping back of the landscapes representational line and form – often creating an ethereal or atmospheric sense. She is curious about what is within each of us – our subconscious – how we see and interpret experiences and situations, and how this resonates independently. Her work often evokes a connection to a place or emotion within the viewer, prompting conversations about personal experiences, memories and thoughts.

Josie Walter began her ceramic journey after joining an evening class.  This became a real passion and in 1976 she enrolled on the Studio Ceramics course at Chesterfield College of Art. After three years of throwing, building kilns, visiting potters and generally being immersed in pottery, Josie opened a workshop in Matlock.  Further experience in production pottery was honed with Suzie and Nigel Atkins at the Poterie du Don in the Auvergne, France. Josie worked at Le Don as an apprentice for 6 months in 1980 making salt glazed domestic ware, then returned to the workshop in Matlock where she made once fired decorated earthenware pottery.

Now Josie is happily installed in a workshop that she had built in the garden at home in Matlock.