Press Release for the exhibition

SHORE THING

THE DRAMATIC tidal life around the South Devon coast has inspired one of Scotland’s leading painters to produce a new body of work for a forthcoming solo exhibition in the South Hams town of Modbury.

Charles Jamieson is an award-winning painter based in Ayrshire, Scotland and this is his first solo exhibition in the south west of England.

For this new exhibition, which opens on April 28 and runs throughout May, the artist has taken himself off around the quieter corners of South Devon on what he describes as ‘a real voyage of discovery’.

Charles, whose work is collected by a host of well-known public figures, including bestselling author, John Le Carré, comedian Harry Enfield and Upstairs Downstairs star Keeley Hawes, visited South Devon last year and found himself drawn to beauty spots such as Burgh Island, Hope Cove and South Sands.

He explains: “I enjoyed the dramatic tidal life of South Devon and how different the land and seascape looks at the rise and fall of the tide. One of the images which stayed with me was the way the boats sit on the sand waiting to be made free again.

“You always feel you are there on borrowed time, because the tide is always on the point of coming in again.

“Exploring the area was a joy for me as an artist. I drove along narrow roads stumbling across little villages or heading to bigger towns like Dartmouth and getting a feel for the maritime history.”

A chance trip on the South Sands ferry in Salcombe led to one of the most striking paintings in this exhibition, The South Sands Ferry.

“There are several ferries in Salcombe,” he says. “One is a small boat that carries half a dozen people to the other side of the river. I saw the ferryman sitting by his boat, with no-one around, so asked him if he would take us out and take us around the bay. “He did this and I took photographs and made sketches. He enjoyed himself so much he took us way down towards the river mouth.

The resulting body of work is, according to arts writer Jan Patience, a ‘vivid blast of pure colour’.

Jan, who writes a regular column on the galleries scene in Scotland for the Glasgow-based Herald newspaper, adds: “I’ve got to know Charlie and his work well in the last six years, and thing which always strikes me about it is how good it makes me feel.

“He has a wonderful line and an intuitive feel for reducing a scene to its purest form. Whether he is painting in Cuba, France, Devon or Salcombe, he always brings a very real sense of wamth to his art.”

Brownston Gallery owner Catherine Gillen adds: “I am delighted that we will have the opportunity to exhibit new work by a British artist of the calibre of Charles Jamieson at the Brownston Gallery and I am especially looking forward to showing his paintings of local Devon scenes as well as others from his travels around the world.”

NOTES FOR EDITORS:

Charles Jamieson is an award-winning artist, actor, writer and photographer, but as he says himself, he can't do them all at once. A passionate advocate of the arts and fellow artists, he was one of the co-founders of The Aspect Prize, dubbed Scotland's Turner Prize for painters. He is also a past president of long established art organisation, Paisley Art Institute. For many years, he was a familiar figure on Scottish screens through through playing Ruari Galbraith on long-running Scottish soap opera, Take The High Road. He is due to appear in Ken Loach's forthcoming film, The Angel's Share.

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