Still Life Paintings

This new exhibition here on our current exhibition pages and in The Atrium Gallery, at The Low Wood Bay Hotel, Windermere is a celebration of still life paintings by two painters from Cumbria, Tina Balmer and Rebecca Scott.

Tina Balmer lives and works in Ulverston. She graduated from St Martin’s School of Art in London in 1983, where she studied Fashion Design. Tina has been exhibiting her work since 1998. Solo exhibitions have been held at Brantwood, near Coniston and the Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal. Alongside producing her own work, Tina has organised various art trails and exhibitions in the north of England, including Printfest and Artfest North.

The subject matter for Tina’s paintings are everyday objects, representing the rituals of daily life such as vases, jugs, teapots and flowers. Tina calls her paintings: ‘A celebration of the domestic and the ordinary’.

After years of painting other things, I went to see a Rose Hilton exhibition at Tate St. Ives and was struck by how she paints what she wants; women, rooms, flowers. Maybe it’s harder to paint something that seems frivolous, but I want to paint flowers. I love them. It’s what I enjoy painting. So I decided to go back to things that are important to me, people and objects that remind me of the joy of life’.

Rebecca Scott, whose work is in private and public collections nationally and internationally, currently lives and works between London and Cumbria, and is Co- Founder of Cross Lane Projects, an independent art space in Kendal. Rebecca studied Fine Art at Chelsea School of Art, and gained an MA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths, University of London. She has exhibited in London, Cumbria, Spain, France, Germany, Sweden, and Norway.

I tend to work in series, and retrospectively I can see a biographical aspect to my oeuvre; the topics I chose to respond to, have often been meaningful in a personal sense, playing out in reaction to the situations I have found myself in’. Rebecca Scott 2024 

Rebecca’s paintings revolve around the transformation of conventional photographic imagery into painted works. The Perfect Life series epitomizes Scott’s exploration of consumer desire as manifested in visual culture. There are a number of paintings in this exhibition from the series.

When asked about which artist influenced her work, Tina Balmer pays tribute to a friend and mentor, the artist known especially for her stained glass work, Margaret Traherne.

She has had a big influence on my painting and I came to inherit many of her paints so some of the colours I used actually belonged to her, bringing Margaret into the paintings for me’.

Rebecca cites the painter Vermeer (1632 – 1675) whose mastery of light, composition, and symbolism in the genre of still life continues to reverberate through art history today. Still Life has been a recurring and constant theme of Rebecca’s work for a number of years. The painting Simba – a large yellow single rose, oil on canvas work, dates from 1999, while the painting Down Time was painted earlier this year.

Both artists have exhibited previously with Gavagan Art.  The actual exhibition at the Low Wood Bay Hotel, Windermere continues to 31 July 2024. All the paintings in this exhibition are eligible for the OWN ART scheme through Gavagan Art. Please ask if you are interested – [email protected] – 07799797961