Beauty of countryside captured in harmony

THREE friends have collaborated for an art exhibition after they found lots of harmonies across their work.

“Common Ground”, by Wendy Reed, Gerry Coles and Jo Lillywhite, comes to the Old Fire Station Gallery in Upper Market Place next weekend, with shared themes of poppies, wild garlic and foxgloves.

Wendy, a photographer from Stoke Row, says: “The exhibition will feature topics close to our hearts, countryside, flowers, British wildlife, trees and the colours of the seasons.

“We’ve given a few teasers on social media.

“I really admired what Jo had done, because I love the depth and the light. It’s the depth in her paintings that totally inspires me. She always has really good leading lines and there are patches of light that draw the eye.

“Gerry’s are kind of botanically correct, because she starts with observations, hers are very much graphic representations of natural things.

“In terms of composition they’re very minimalist and I think less is more.”

Jo, a painter from Woodcote, says: “I first met Wendy and Gerry in Oxfordshire Artweeks and we have all showed our work together in Watlington.

“We seemed to almost gravitate towards each other because of this crossover in similar themes in our artwork.

“We would bump into each other at various events. There was a lovely moment in Oxford, where my bluebell painting was next to a photograph of Wendy’s of bluebells.

“It was kind of like we’d both seen the same thing in the woods but we had interpreted it differently and there they were together on the wall. So, we got chatting and got to know each other a bit more.

“I love Gerry’s detail and the precise working and the fact it is so stylish.”

Gerry, a printmaker from Stoke Talmage, had her linocut Clarinet: Lines and Spaces accepted for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition last year.

She says: “Wendy’s work has got this beautiful softness to it.

“She is so particular about choosing beautiful colours. It’s her signature style, it’s amazing.

“Jo’s colours absolutely leap at you, but that is so brilliant. Some of her work she bases on the colours of different birds, for example a kingfisher is orange and turquoise, she’s got paintings that are based round those colour schemes.”

Wendy was particularly inspired by woodland near Streatley. “I’ll go and recce an area, and the particular wood that I wanted to take pictures, I decided I needed to go when the wild garlic was absolutely at its peak. The first green beech leaves were unfurling and then it’s a case of going and hoping that you get a suitable morning.

“I would be there for maybe an hour and a half, just watching how the light started to come into the wood and then took quite a few pictures.

“With the wild garlic, it was one where the light was just catching an overhanging bough with some really beautiful new beech leaves.

“Then I showed that to Gerry and Jo and then they went off on their interpretations.”

Gerry decided to create a multiblock print. “It’s built up of several blocks, all different linocuts, and it’s all come together on top of each other.

“I knew I wanted to do an up-close version of Wendy’s photograph, so I wanted to actually check out the anatomy of the plants.

“So I found garlic plants in a wood and snapped a few pictures to really get the detail.

“My prints are somewhat pared back and sparse, but I do need the detail in my head and then I can decide how to go.”

Jo says: “It’s almost like Wendy gave me the perfect scene to interpret. She found it at a perfect time of day in the morning. I don’t go out first thing, but Wendy is very good at that.

“It’s the atmosphere that you see in her paintings, it’s these mists in the morning. It’s the subtle light that comes through.

“She’s capturing an atmosphere which is really useful for me because then I can put a different feeling of light into a painting.

“I make the paintings quite large and I ramp up the colours to make something colourful, bright and striking.”

Wendy adds: “People always remark that [my photographs] look like paintings. I’m very happy when people say that. I love impressionism and so I like when pictures have a slightly, not very abstract, but a slight painterly feel.”

l Common Ground is at the Old Fire Station Gallery from Thursday, July 7 to Tuesday, August 12, open from 11am to 5pm daily. There will be prints, greetings cards and original artwork for sale. For more information, visit www.wendy
reedphotography.co.uk, www.jolillywhiteart.co.uk or www.gerrycolesprints.co.uk