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OVENDEN CONTEMPORARY

A striking exhibition of seascape paintings by a collection of exceptional British Artists from around the country:

Jo Booth BA (Hons)
Gareth Buxton
Helen Jones
Willow Cairn BA (Hons)

Needhams Restaurant
186 Main Street, Witchford, Ely, Cambridgeshire CB6 2HT

25th January to 21st March 2007

Jo Booth's landscapes possess a remarkable informality, a sense of freedom that liberates the viewer, momentarily. But above all, they are simple, honest representations of the natural world. Booth is clearly besotted with the strikingly beautiful landscapes near her home in south west England. She paints the beauty, the space, the sense of occasion, even the possibilities that she sees before her, without resorting to photo-realism to get that message across. The sea, the sky, the rocks, the sand- all the obvious elemental players are there, so superbly abbreviated, but still in all their inherent glory. An accomplished Collographer, Booth revels in the simplicity of this printing method, with impressive results. A degree in Geography obviously adds a valuable dimension to the landscape Artist and Booth certainly makes the most of her two passions of Art and Geography.

The impressive artistic development of Buxton, based in Derbyshire, is, in our opinion at least, attributable to an appalling car crash he was involved in a couple of years ago. He admits that, since the accident that came within an inch of taking his life, he has been forced to re-evaluate his priorities. But it is clear that he is evaluating much more than that. His stormy land & seascapes take us on a somewhat brave & very engaging journey. Buxton now relies on his increasingly elaborate form of expression as a catharsis. It's as if each moment that passes since his near-fatal road-traffic accident somehow brings him closer to understanding the ramifications of what could have happened on that day. He sees the fragility of existence and then seems to revel in it. You can see the endlessness of nature in his work and that reminds us of our own mortality.


Helen Jones began painting, for the first time since childhood, in order to deal with the boredom and isolation of her relocation to Northamptonshire in 2002. Since then, the practice of painting has become so much more important, rebuilding Helen's confidence and, perhaps more significantly, providing an outlet for a particularly distressing chidbirth experience. Now, as a mother of two small children, Helen can't stop painting and experimenting and has developed her skills significantly in a few short years. Her land and seascapes betray a lingering sense of isolation. You can almost hear Jones willing the storm to pass. In several paintings it does pass and you feel the same sense of relief that Helen must feel as she paints.



The intriguing Artist & mother of three, Willow Cairn, based in East Kent, produces an eclectic range of work for her portfolio, and quite sporadically so. Her painting practices seem to revolve around periods in her life when she needs to process certain stressful situations, scenarios or events. The recurring motif, running throughout much of her work, is the spiral or vortex. One gets the impression that Cairn frequently feels as though she is being consumed by a whirlpool or tornado, the symbol features so often. It's as if the process of painting these vortices is a way of gaining control over the course of her life.