PRESS RELEASE

Janey Sharratt and Patrick Smith

Exhibition date: 18th April – 5th May

Private View: Wednesday 18th April 6-9pm

We are delighted to present the work of two talented artists:

Janey Sharratt: The unique character of Janey’s work is constantly appealing. Soft, gentle landscapes and

ethereal floating still life work, is hugely appealing. Peter Stickland wrote this about her work:

“Janey Sharratt loves canvas and loves paint, once she has gathered her feelings around a particular moment

that inspired her to dream, she directs the paint to play upon the canvas. Her paintings are a celebration of the

journey she undertakes with a paintbrush; in the delight she experiences when considering placement and

making connections, in the ecstacy that colour and texture promote. Janey often removes the paint or

repeatedly adds new layers, because on this journey she is always vacillating between making the subject clear

and obscuring it.”

Janey lectures on Spatial Design part-time at Chelsea School of Art and Design.

‘Black bottle moves forward’

‘Bright Pair’

‘Blink of the eye’

Patrick Smith is an articulate man, a poet-painter, and any conversation about his art is peppered with

references to the Abstract-Expressionists of America and post war investigative British Modernism. Citing

Hans Hoffmann, Robert Motherwell, Peter Lanyon and Eduardo Chillida is shorthand for describing what

lights Patrick up, the physical immersion and emotional impact of his place.

Patrick's largely abstract landscapes of his Yorkshire home are characterised by spatial illusion, eliminating the

unnecessary, and painting with fields of colour. The occasional starkness of black mass as a basic element in his

pictures speaks of painter-printmaker Motherwell. These paintings are windows on the Yorkshire moors,

sometimes aerial bird's eye views. Air wraps around land with the rhythmic curves of Chillida's monumental

iron sculptures and site specific work. White painted, angled frames, after a design by Hofmann, reinforce his

interest in edges and refract light.

Patrick studied Painting and Printmaking at Leeds Metropolitan and Utrecht School of Arts in Holland, and has

lectured BA (Hons) Art & Design, Fine Art and Printmaking. He now concentrates on his own painting and

printmaking. This is Patrick’s first show with Highgate Contemporary Art and we are very excited and

delighted to welcome him.

Whisper

At the window