Contemporary Masters from the East of England, 2017

Date: April 2017
Exhibition/Show Type: Group
Media: Painting

Exhibition Description

Contemporary Masters from the East of England showcases a number of new and emerging artists of both national and international significance.

Contemporary Masters from the East of England draws 35 works from the Priseman Seabrook Collection of 21st Century British Painting which is housed in North Essex. It is the only art collection in the United Kingdom dedicated to painting produced in Britain after the year 2000.

The Exhibition Catalogue (downloadable .pdf)

Historically the East of England has nurtured some of Britain’s greatest painters, from Thomas Gainsborough and John Constable in the 18th and 19th centuries to Christopher Le Brun and Maggi Hambling in the 20th. It has seen the establishment of the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing at Benton End by Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett-Haines in 1939, whose students included Lucian Freud and Valerie Thornton and the Norwich School of Design in 1845 whose alumni include Michael Andrews, Colin Self and Susan Gunn. This level of excellence in the art of painting from the eastern region of the United Kingdom has continued to evolve and grow into the 21st century with a new wave of painters who have made the area their home and the production of internationally significant painting their life’s work.

Contemporary Masters from the East of England showcases a number of these new and emerging artists of both national and international significance, displaying work by John Moores Prize winner Nicholas Middleton, 54th Venice Biennale exhibitor Marguerite Horner, East London Painting Prize Winner Nathan Eastwood, Kettle’s Yard exhibitor Amanda Ansell, Leverhulme Trust awardee David Sullivan, Digswell Arts Fellow Freya Purdue and Mary Webb who received a solo show at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in 2011, amongst many others.

In defining the “East of England” I have sought to select works mainly produced in the heart of the region as it is widely known, that being Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex, and I have also cast the net further afield and included paintings produced in Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Kent and Lincolnshire. This ties in more broadly with the way the eastern region of England is represented by the BBC, commercial television companies and the Arts Council.

By using the term “masters” I aim to make a claim here that the many of the more interesting British artists practicing painting today are producing work which is being made at or approaching the highest level, and many of them, like their historical predecessors, hail from the eastern region of England. But something else also emerges from the use of the word “master” which is interesting; that up to the end of the 20th century, art production and display has been dominated by men. Now however we are witnessing many more women artists coming to the fore as exceptional painters. Indeed, in this small selection of 35 paintings, 21 are by women, placing male artists very much in the minority.

Painting, at the beginning of the 21st century is now expressing itself along the same lines as the slow food movement, meditation and unplugged music. It offers a direct and contemplative connection with the “hand-made” and with real objects which mediate our emotional makeup as people. We see this most clearly in the fact that the works presented here display no clear and consistent group narrative or movement, and are instead a collection of highly individualistic interpretations which offer visual interactions with the physical world. Gone now are the multitude of “isms” which made up the landscape of 20th century art, instead they have been replaced by the one big “ism” of the 21st century, “individualism”. In the light of this we may begin to think of, and experience the paintings presented here, not as works of art produced from the hands of specifically female or male artists, but from a group of individuals; unique, talented and united by the common bonds of time and place and a desire to connect to the elusive experience of what it is to be human through the medium of paint.

Selected Works

Collaborating Artists

Amanda Ansell
Annabel Dover
Anushka Kolthammer
Barbara Howey
Ben Coode-Adams
Claudia Böse
David Sullivan
Debbie Ayles
Delia Tournay-Godfrey
Emma Cameron
Freya Purdue
Gideon Pain
Harvey Taylor
Jeffrey Dennis
Jemma Watts
Jenny Creasy
Julie Umerle
Kirsty O’Leary- Leeson
Laura Leahy
Linda Ingham
Marguerite Horner
Mary Webb
Michael Middleton
Nathan Eastwood
Nicholas Middleton
Paul Galyer
Paula MacArthur
Rhonda Whitehead
Robert Priseman
Ruth Philo
Sam Douglas
Simon Carter
Stephen Lewis
Stephen Newton
Susan Gunn
Tony Casement
Wendy Elia