Shelter – The Outside In National Open Exhibition is currently taking place at the New Walsall Art Gallery and is well worth a viewing. Taking it’s place across the whole of the third floor of the gallery, it showcases a range of art work that has been created in response to the theme ‘Shelter’. The charity Outside In was established in 2006 to support artists who meet additional barriers to the art world. This might be due to health, disability, social circumstances or isolation. Shelter is their 7th national open exhibition, and the first that I have had the pleasure of seeing, and I was really impressed by the interpretations…

I am a huge fan of the New Walsall Art Gallery, and often pop along to see new exhibitions, particularly if they feature local artists. Last month I went to see one that really interested me, as it featured local landscapes seen in a completely different way. The Suzanne Holtom exhibition ‘And Hills Bore Scars‘ is a stunning exploration of key sites around Walsall and Dudley described as ‘geosites’. The New Walsall Art Gallery explain:- The Black Country geosites of Barr Beacon, Streetly and Wren’s Nest, Dudley have been key to her most recent work. Ancient limestone formations and more recent collapsed structures from mining and industry provide rich visual…

Clyde Holmes was a London born artist, but his heart lay in the heart of Wales. In 1970 he moved with his family to a remote Shepherd cottage near Bala, in the heart of the beautiful Snowdonia National Park, For the next 30+ years it was this area that inspired his work in painting and poetry. He said:- My painting was concerned with expressing the mystery and the power of the wilder aspects of welsh landscapes which we’re all part of – there’s no difference between nature outside us and nature inside us. In my painting I’ve been attempting to express the silent dialogue between light and dark. We all live…

I must admit I have caught this wonderful exhibition very late on. It ends this weekend, fittingly on the occasion of International Women’s Day. Painted Dreams, the art of Evelyn De Morgan, is a re-visitation, and a re-imagining, of an exhibition that was first held at the Wolverhampton Art Gallery in 1907. This was a unique, and important exhibition. It was incredibly rare for a modern gallery to dedicate a show to a solo female artist in Edwardian times. Featuring thirty artworks, Painted Dreams reveals De Morgan’s progression as an artist and her technical mastery as one of the most impressive artists of the late Victorian era. Discover De Morgan’s exploration of…