Great Yarmouth Paintings
This month the seafront sights of Great Yarmouth will once
again be taking centre-stage in an exhibition of paintings by Yarmouth-based
artist Jane Hall. Jane, who lives and works just a stone’s throw from the
town’s Golden Mile, is best known for her colourful, Pop Art-influenced
paintings of ice creams, amusement arcades, fish and chip shops and
roller-coaster rides. “There is so much inspiration right here on my doorstep,”
she explains, “and it’s a constantly changing environment. It’s now almost two
years since my previous show and so many of the ice cream parlours, restaurants
and arcades have either changed hands or updated their signage. It allows me to
revisit old places and look at them afresh; and I hope to capture that sense of
renewal in the works that these places inspire.”
Just like
Yarmouth seafront, Jane’s work has also undergone a sense of renewal in recent
months. Although she is still producing monumental ice cream paintings and ‘in
your face’ images of fruit machines, she has also been experimenting with the
palette knife to produce lush, thick paintings of ice cream sundaes; and with a
much smaller canvas size to produce her ‘Postcards from Great Yarmouth’ series.
The postcards are miniature 5x7-inch depictions of Great Yarmouth street scenes
and local monuments, such as St. Nicholas Church and St. George’s Theatre, often
captured at oblique angles. The postcards also allow Jane’s quirky artistic eye
to focus on much less obvious choices of subject – for every painting of an
amusement arcade, there’s another of a kebab shop, or of a laundrette caught at
night-time, or of the lights in a local convenience store.
Jane says:
“I’ve tried to explore Great Yarmouth from all angles this time. The seafront
is still my main inspiration, but I’ve also tried to see the beauty in the back
streets and side streets and even in some of the more run-down places. A lot of
these newer paintings show Yarmouth by night; and it’s amazing how what might
seem like the most uninspiring of subject by day can look completely different
if lit well at night. Even just something as simple as capturing the light in a
shop window can make for a beautiful, quiet painting. It might not be what
you’d see on a typical seaside postcard, but it can really capture the spirit
of a town.”
SEASIDE SENSATION 3 – POSTCARDS FROM GREAT YARMOUTH will
take place at the Rumbelow Gallery at Great Yarmouth Library from 12th
– 22nd February. For more information on Jane’s work, visit
www.jane-hall.co.uk.
No comments:
Post a Comment