Frances Carlile at the Silk Top Hat Gallery, Ludlow

Sculptor and printmaker Frances Carlile is exhibiting her beautiful prints, which include lino prints, etching and woodcuts, at the Silk Top Hat Gallery in Ludlow from 23rd April - 12th May. Sharing the top floor in the gallery is Frances' husband Alan Oldham exhibiting his Sculptural Ceramics.

Frances uses narrative in her work as 'a device for expanding space and time.' I attended the Private View at the gallery this Sunday and was very excited by Frances' work which includes a series of large woodcuts (not shown here) which explore 'the use of pale subtle colours' - something which I explore in my own work.

The Silk Top Hat Gallery in Ludlow is a little oasis in this beautiful historic town, tucked away in Quality Square just off the main Castle Square. The courtyard is also a nice place to stop off for a coffee in one of its cafes:

Clare Woods, The Unquiet Head, Hepworth Wakefield

At the end of October I took a slight detour in my journey home with the intention of seeing Clare Woods' latest exhibition The Unquiet Head at one of Yorkshire's newly opened art galleries The Wakefield Hepworth. The immense scale of Woods' work evokes the 'motif of rock formations found within the British Landscape' and allows the viewer to stand back and observe these 'canvases' in a similar way that the viewer would do outside. Woods responds to the subject just as modern British artists Graham Sutherland, Paul Nash and Barbara Hepworth have done before. However,Woods prefers these works to be 'directly related to sculpture':

Sections on these aluminium canvas appear to be painted as smaller scenes, creating psychologically resonating worlds within themselves and the larger whole appears to take on figurative organic forms:



Individual areas explore texture and colour:






The gallery itself is an impressive space with large windows enabling close up views of the surrounding old renovated buildings and rushing water of the river outside:

Clare Woods exhibition continues until Sunday 29th January 2012. Other exhibitions included some British landscape artists, paintings and drawings of Yorkshire and an ongoing exhibition exploring the processes of Barbara Hepworth at work: