Ilminster Arts Centre (Somerset) Exhibition

Two Tell Tales - An exhibition of artworks by Caron and Gordon Coldwell. Private View 5 -7pm, 29 Feb 2016.

Ilminster Arts Centre  (Somerset)

An introduction to the artworks of Caron and Gordon Coldwell.

“One can think of a number of notable husband and wife artistic partnerships where although each artist maintains a separate creative agenda and working process, they can also potentially serve as mentors, apologists and champions of their partner’s work.

Peter Blake and Jann Haworth, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, Vanessa and Clive Bell, Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning, Georgia O’Keefe and Alfred Stieglitz are all what might be called successful, though sometimes tormented and difficult artistic partnerships and there are many others. The Bulgarian artist Christo and his wife Jeanne-Claude are somewhat of an exception in that they work closely together towards a uniform realisation of their concepts and ideas whilst others forge ahead independently yet in parallel with their partners. 

I commend to you another fascinating and compelling husband and wife team with the work of Gordon and Caron Coldwell. Married since 1980 and resident  in Somerset since1987, they both have an impressive CV of Art and Design teaching in both further and higher education as well as a wide experience of creating and exhibiting their work throughout the south of England.

While avoiding the pitfalls of negative competitiveness they both benefit from taking an active, critical and insightful interest in each other’s work and, somewhat surprisingly, this is to be their first joint exhibition.

Gordon’s fascinating and skilful digital manipulation of well-loved artistic imagery produces pictures that challenge, entertain and sometimes perplex and each viewing can provide fresh insights into the work that he has so sensitively and ingeniously used and exploited. His final painterly finishing touches display the undoubted deft practical touches that complement his considerable IT skills.

Caron’s work is similarly finely detailed and carefully crafted and her exquisitely produced paper moulds of spoons and vases are decorated with an intriguing array of themed visual references many of which play with our nostalgia for shared cultural memories. Her painting is soft, expressive and delicate and also seems to concern itself with willowy remembrances of times past and places visited. Her gentle, sensitive and warm personality is illustrated beautifully in every piece.

It isn’t essential to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of art history to fully appreciate their work but a certain cultural awareness will certainly add to your understanding and enjoyment of the subtlety of what they do. What seems to me to unify their work, that initially might seem to be so different and diverse, is a respect for and appreciation of the various artistic reference points that each artist uses to such good effect. Although serious and considered in their work, there is an infectious sense of play and humour in what they do and I think this is probably what endears me to their work most of all.

Both artists express the wish that the viewer should leave the gallery having viewed their work with a ‘smile in their mind’ and this is certainly one of the main responses that I take away from their work and with so much of today’s contemporary conceptual work being so arid and sterile in its pseudo intellectual bombast, that is surely no bad thing.”

Andrew Sutton - 2016