“A moment glimpsed, something beautiful, walking on Dartmoor.
A pink hillside against the afternoon sunlight.
Why should this become the painting Primavera?
How did that split second resonate so deeply within me accruing memory,
feeling and loss – resonate into the life and presence of this work?
Black winter branches against the evening sky, bright green fields, the pageant of
wilderness, the gleam of a river all awaken in me an inner life and my
quick drawings act as a portal that looks back into this secret world.
And yet the paintings somehow escape this, escape from me the artist and
from the subject, from nature and from what I say .
The paintings seem to emerge from an unknown and infinite realm and by another hand.
The portraits although of a specific person also touch something else …
So Linda becomes perhaps an echo of a Prehistoric Queen -reaching back into time.
A cist burial of a young female complete with grave goods discovered
on the High Moorland of Dartmoor amidst lonely peat hags and desolation.
Who was she what did she look like what age was she when she died –the magic
of imagination which acts in freedom and has entered the golden sea .
Within that internal sea observed reality, nature, the person in front of one
as one paints in the light of the studio –within that transformation occurs.”
– Richard Cook, 2021
We are delighted to announce the arrival of spring with our spectacular exhibition ‘Primavera’ filmed and broadcasted on location at Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens gallery.
The exhibition features work by Richard Cook, Henrietta Dubrey, Spencer Shakespeare & Emily Powell.
While we wait for gardens and galleries to reopen, Livingstone St. Ives in conjunction with Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens are delighted to share this with you.
Inspired by Richard Cook’s painting ‘Primavera’, its Botticelli namesake, and the mystical bathers in Manet’s Les Dejeuners Sur L’herbe, we had an idea for a show in which nymphs and goddesses bathed in the forest alongside jungle tigers and flora and fauna, as nature reawakens.
Throughout the month of March, we will be filming and broadcasting the exhibition in a series of live videos every morning at 11am on our social media channels. Alongside interviews with the artists talking about their work, we will be touring the gardens with founder Neil Armstrong and sharing the spectacular, exotic, sub-tropical plants and spring growth.
Founder Alicia Livingstone explains, “When we were invited by Tremenheere to use the gallery to film our spring exhibition, it soon became clear that the show drew so many links with the gardens that we really wanted to blend the two. The show’s themes resonated so closely with the very concept of Tremenheere’s identity.”
