May 7-28 2015 CURWEN GALLERY Mark Cazalet - Open a 'pdf' of this press release - return to Galleries PR Index

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Paintings & Drawings from Les Bassacs

7-28 May 2015

Private View Wednesday 6th May 6-8pm

Mark Cazalet has been making artwork in

response to his visits to the small hamlet of

Les Bassacs in the Luberon Valley, Vaucluse

for nearly 20 years. This beautiful location has

captivated his imagination with its brilliant

light and distinctive aromatic fragrance.

The architecture of the woodland has been a reoccurring theme for his work, influenced by the Romantic

English landscape tradition as well as the poetry of Philip Larkin, Dylan Thomas and Robert Frost. In his

new work Mark Cazalet aims to capture a sense of place, both in the contours of the landscape itself as

well as in the subtler emotional essence of his memories.

Six years ago, during a teaching excursion to Les

Bassacs, he began working at dawn to draw the

effects of the first rays of the sun on the foliage. In

the evenings, after his classes were over for the day,

he found there to be a good moon, so at night he

continued drawing. This habit of dawn and dusk

drawings formalised into a routine over that period.

He took to the idea of imagining that the dawn

drawings were a kind of Matins focused around a

song of thanks for a new day, Mary’s Magnificat. The

Dusk drawings were equally a leave taking of the

light and celebration of a day closing. They became

Simeon’s Nunc Dimitis.

These meditative intentions made the works into a kind of graphic mindfulness exercise, a period of

contemplation at the beginning and end of the day. The results of this period of ritualised working will be

showing at Curwen Gallery this May.

Images: part of Les Basaacs Autumn series, chalk on coloured paper, 25 x 65cm

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