LUKE ELWES

North House Gallery is delighted to present this exhibition of new works on paper by Luke Elwes.

‘Elwes makes a kind of celestial confetti, a serene fusion of light and the motes dancing in it. He might also be painting a million million prayers, written on multi-coloured scraps of paper and scattered to the ends of the earth, falling alike on fallow ground or fertile. Whatever its cause, there is a quiet joy to his meditations, which chimes well with the understated beauty of his images’
(Andrew Lambirth 2011)

These new works on paper, made under an open sky on the east coast, are the result of the fluid interaction of natural and man made materials. They conjure up a particular space where land and water meet, where the shifting light radiates across the salt marshes and where the tides move back and forth through the delicate maze of creeks and channels. They are also about the passage of time, a record not only of my own presence within this aqueous field but also of the incidental life that flows over it, from the migrating birds to the scattered flora and fauna that lines the ancient tracks and colours the scattered margins of distant islands. Each picture was made on a single day, and the prevailing conditions are mirrored in the drawing, in the way it succumbs to a sea breeze, an enveloping mist, or a sudden downpour. Pigment dissolves, runs and dries in unforeseen ways (and with unexpected results) as the paper’s surface becomes rain spattered, mud flecked, or softened by the rising waters. And each time the resulting image belongs as much to the elements as to the artist who began it.
(Luke Elwes, 2012)


Luke Elwes was born in 1961 in London, where he lives and works. Between 1979 and 1985 he studied Art History at Bristol University and Painting at Camberwell and has had 15 solo shows since his first in 1990. His early years in Iran and extensive travels in distant desert regions have affected his sensitivity to wild places, even those more familiar and closer to home. He is also a curator and writer on contemporary painting.


An e-catalogue will be available during the exhibition.