Summer Exhibition 2013

SUMMER EXHIBITION
INTRODUCTION
This exhibition will showcase new work by gallery artists such as
Lesley Thiel, Charlie Mackesy, Susan Swartz, Trish Wylie, Trudy
Good and Maria Filopoulou as well as introducing new artists,
including the very talented artist, Darren Baker.
Work by
Greek painters Chryssa Verghi and Stephanos Daskilakis will
also be shown along with paintings by Italian painter Luca
Battini.
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LESLEY THIEL
Lesley Thiel is a renowned Equestrian artist. Born in England, she studied at London University
before moving to Europe and, later the United States.
Whilst living in the United States, Lesley discovered her love of horses when visiting a friend’s
Arabian Stud, eventually coming to own one of the horses herself. Having relegated art to a
hobby for many years, Lesley found herself drawn to the horses' individual personalities and
distinctive nature and began to devote herself to capturing their distinctive charisma and power
in paintings and drawings:
“The beauty of a horse in motion has the capacity to suspend time for the viewer. This is the magic they possess
and to which so many of us are drawn”
Upon her return to the UK, in 2003, and inspired by the sheer power and grace of these
stunning animals, Lesley took up art as a full time career in order to concentrate on painting
horses. Since that time Lesley has had works accepted for exhibitions at the Mall Galleries in
London and Palace House in Newmarket. Her work has been published in Limited Edition and
has been represented in Galleries throughout the country, generating an avid following of
Collectors worldwide, including in the U.K., North America, and Europe.
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Working in Oils and Pastels, Lesley drew inspiration from artists, such as Ruebens and Bonheur,
whose works conveyed the spirit, energy and strength of horses. With her use of delicate palettes
and soft colour, Lesley offers the viewer the opportunity to experience for themselves the
magnificent power, compassion and spirit combined with the natural beauty of her horses. With
subtle colours and soft brush strokes Lesley allows her audience to feel the movement and touch
of her chosen subject.
Lesley has chosen to focus on the oldest of breeds, the Arabian, Lusitano, and Andalusian,
renowned for their spirit and beautiful movement. These wonderful creatures have spent
centuries working in partnership with man, and are exceptional in their intelligence, kindness and
sparkling personalities.
More recently, Lesley has begun a series of works featuring The Coldstream Guards and Blues
and Royals of the Horseguards. These works focus on the hard work and commitment to
excellence required by both man and horse in creating the spectacles of pageantry we see in the
UK.
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BOLERO
20 x 16 inches
Oil on Canvas
£4,000
5
PHOENIX
72 x 36 inches
Oil on Canvas
£14,500
6
ENGLAND, MY ENGLAND
39 x 32 inches
Oil on Canvas
£9,500
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SPLENDOUR
39 x 39 inches
Oil on Canvas
£10,000
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MARIA FILOPOULOU
Born in Athens in 1964 Maria Filopoulou studied painting in Paris at Ecole Superieure des
Beaux-Arts under Leonardo Cremonini, from 1984-1988. She continued with postgraduate
studies at the same school, with a scholarship from the French Government, from 1988-1989.
She learnt lithography under Abraham Hadad. Her works are to be found in the Athens National
Gallery, in the Greek Parliament and in private museums and collections in Greece and abroad.
She has been exhibiting regularly since 1988 and she has had 17 private exhibitions in Athens,
Thessaloniki, Paris, London and New York. One of which was a "Retrospective"(2009), which
showcased works from the last 20 years. She also exhibited her work in over 100 group
exhibitions in Greece, France, Monaco, Belgium, London, Rome, Istanbul, Berlin, Frankfurt,
Melbourne, Beijing, Florida and New York.
Filopoulou, who defends the value of painting, does so without fear of colour, with momentum
and strength in her paintings. Her work can be distinguished by characteristic curvature and
distortions appearing as if seen by a wide angled lens. The subjects of her paintings include
seascapes, greenhouses, interiors and staircases. Since 1995 she has centred on panoramic
landscapes, seascapes and sea views from boats. As an extension to the seascapes she includes a
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series of swimmers painted as seen from underwater. The swimmers are in complete freedom,
bodies which have lost their gravity, nude to give a greater sense of freedom. She wants them to
seem as though they belong to this environment. The strong light and the reflection of the water
on the nude bodies, the bubbles and the sand on the bottom of the sea transform the scene into
a dream world.
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UNDER WATER SWIMMERS I
112 x 200 cm
Oil on Canvas
£24,000
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DARREN BAKER
Darren Baker has become one of the UK’s most collectable artists since his remarkable portrait
of the Queen was unveiled by Princess Anne at Westminster Abbey in 2011. Darren has painted
Prime Ministers, Royalty and the sporting elite, and his celebrated works hang in collections from
10 Downing Street and the House of Lords to St James’s Palace. His oil paintings and charcoals
have attracted critical and popular acclaim — the Sunday Times described his work as “thrilling”
and “virtuosic” — and his paintings are increasingly sought after by art collectors from the UK,
Europe, the USA and Japan.
Darren has enjoyed a level of success that most artists only dream of. He has produced an
impressive portfolio of figurative work and portraiture, still life and interiors, cityscapes, and
animal portraiture which graces many prestigious public and private collections around the
world. He has worked alongside and produced paintings for such star sporting names as Lewis
Hamilton, Steven Gerrard and Amir Khan, while his non-sporting portraits include HRH Prince
Charles and Tony Blair. His portrait of Pope John Paul II was greeted with a personal message
of appreciation from the Vatican.
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Darren was born in Yorkshire in 1976. For a young contemporary artist to achieve this kind of
status and recognition is extremely rare and can only be put down to Darren’s unique gift for
naturalistic description. The authenticity of his figures causes a momentary confusion in the
viewer as each nuance is conveyed with such accuracy and truth that we find ourselves
questioning whether we are looking at a beautiful photograph, or an extraordinary painting.
Darren has received numerous awards including The Garrick Prize at Christies, London. He also
enjoys a range of artistic appointments including Official Artist to the Professional Footballers’
Association (the PFA) and Official Artist to the 2012 Olympic Games in London. He is now
acknowledged as one of the leading painters of the classical realism genre, and his style displays
the influences of both the Dutch Masters and the contemporary realist school.
As a keen supporter of, and tireless fundraiser for the Prince’s Trust, Darren has worked closely
with the charity and has been personally thanked by the Prince of Wales for his ongoing
contribution to the success of many major projects.
Sir John Kiszely KCB MC, National President of The Royal British Legion said; “It is clear Darren
Baker has produced one of the most remarkable realistic portraits of our Monarch this century.”
Gordon Taylor, Professional Footballers Association, Chief Executive:
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“There is nothing better than to see a young footballer make the grade when you spotted him at
an early age and he goes on to achieve the highest levels of expectation and in a similar way in
the art world, Darren Baker has shown similar talent inspiration and dedication to reach the top
culminating in him being asked to do a portrait of Her Majesty The Queen.”
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REARING HORSE
12 x 9 inches
Pastel and Pencil on Paper
£6,000
15
BULL ELEPHANT
9 x 7 inches
Pastel and Pencil on Paper
£3,950
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WONDER HORSE
11 x 10 inches
Patel and Pencil on Paper
£6,500
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BURGER OFF
9 x 8 inches
Pastel and Pencil on Paper
£5,850
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GLASS OF WATER
6 x 8 inches
Pastel and Pencil on Paper
£7,500
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CHARLIE MACKESY
‘’I was born and bred in Northumberland in 1962, and spent most of my time running about the
hills with sheep. I began drawing in the early 1980s in London. I didn’t study art but just kept
busy — working as a cartoonist for the Spectator magazine, as an illustrator for Oxford
University Press, drawing ads for the daily papers and doing poster designs for delights such as
Cockspur Rum.
My first show was in a pub in 1984. I’ve since been lucky or blessed enough to work with
galleries in Edinburgh, New York and London and am continuing to do so. The most recent
show was here with the Belgravia Gallery alongside Nelson Mandela...
The drawings and paintings on this site are in no particular meaningful order — and are
randomly picked, but you may notice certain definite themes. It seems, in retrospect, I find an
issue which I work through — such as the Prodigal Son and Daughter, which can take two or
three years to complete—making drawings paintings and bronze sculptures of the subject—until
somehow it’s over and I can move on. There are clear and obvious sections—the jazz, the angels
and musicians, the prodigals; but interspersed between all of these are random studies of life—
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such as of people I know, friends, and cafes which are unspecific in their intentions of theme but
to me are as valid.
I am cautious to explain what I think the work is saying for fear of taking away from you
something you have seen and I have not. I could conclude by saying that life is precious and faith
is a journey and sometimes art can give a small glimpse of these moments seen, and unseen. I
think GK Chesterton put it better—‘At the back of our brains is a blaze of astonishment at our
own existence. The object of the artistic and spiritual life is to dig for this sunrise of wonder’.
Thank you for looking.”
Charlie Mackesy, February 2004
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EMBRACE
30 x 35 inches
Oil on Canvas
£18,000
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JAZZ SCENE
31 x 35 inches
Pastel on paper
£10,000
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HAMMERSMITH CHURCH STUDY
30 x 31 inches
Oil on Canvas
£25,000
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CHRYSSA VERGHI
Chryssa Verghi was born in Athens, Greece in 1959.
She studied painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts under D. Mytaras, L. Kanakakis, N.
Kessanlis and M. Lambraki-Plaka.
She continued studying Interior Designing at the Fine Arts School of California State University
of Long Beach.
From 1990 to 1992, on the Greek State Scholarship, she continued her studies in painting at the
Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, France.
Her works can be found in the Greek Parliament, the National Gallery, the Benaki Museum, the
Museum of Florina, the Kouvoutsakis Pinacotheque, the Agricultural Bank of Greece Collection,
the AGET Eraklis Group of Companies Collection, and other private museums and collections
in Greece and abroad.
She has illustrated many calendars for private enterprises.
Her work was selected to represent Greek Contemporary Art during the Olympic Games of
2004.
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On 22 September 2008, as part of the Environmental Programme of the Goulandris Museum of
Natural History and the SKAI Radio, she donated one of her works, which was auctioned and
finally bought by the Greek Parliament. The proceeds were donated to the National Forest
Fund.
She is considered as one of the most important landscape artists of Greek Contemporary Art,
painting her works ‘’en plein air’’.
She has done numerous solo and collective exhibitions in Greece and abroad.
She lives and works in Athens.
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POPPIES
67 x 75 cm
Acrylic and Oil on Canvas
£7,000
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SPRINGFIELD
103.5 x 105.5 cm
Acrylic and Oil on Canvas
£10,500
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CHARLES CAMOIN
1879- 1965
Charles Camoin was the son of a paint manufacturer in Marseilles who died when Charles was
six years old. His mother travelled extensively, absenting herself for long periods at a time, and
Camoin’s studies suffered accordingly.
At sixteen, he enrolled at a commercial college in Marseilles, but also attended courses at the
École des Beaux-Arts, where he was awarded a first prize for drawing and composition.
In 1896 at the age of seventeen, Camoin moved to Paris where he was admitted to Gustave
Moreau’s class at the École des Beaux Arts, shortly before the latter’s death. He soon left on his
travels in the company of Albert Marquet. During his short time in Moreau’s class Camoin
made a number of lasting friendships, notably with artists who would go on to pioneer Fauvism:
Henry Manguin, Georges Roualt and, in particular, Jean Puy and Henri Matisse, with whom he
exchanged letters on a regular basis.
In 1900, Camoin did his military service, first in Arles, where he painted compositions which
were inspired by Van Gough motifs. In 1902 he was based in Aix, where he frequently met with
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Cezanne, with whom Camoin maintained a life-long correspondence and whose advice and
counsel Camoin cited repeatedly.
In 1903, Camoin exhibited for the first time – at the Salon des Artistes Indèpendants in Paris.
The following year Camoin held his first solo exhibition at the Berthe Weil Gallery in Paris, .in
the same year he also met Claude Monet
The following decade saw Camoin travelling extensively in the company of Marquet, visiting
London, Frankfurt, Naples, Capri, Corsica, and Morocco- where he was accompanied by
Matisse.
In 1912, Camoin exhibited at the Galerie Kahnweiler in Paris and, in 1913 examples of his work
featured at the now legendary Armory Show in New York City.
In 1918, Camoin and Matisse travelled to Cagnes to visit Renoir, the meeting was to prove
decisive because it signalled the end of Cezanne’s influence on Camoin’s work.
In 1920, at the age of forty one, Camoin married Charlotte Prost, their daughter Anne-Marie was
born in 1933. Camoin worked latterly out of two studios, the one in Montmartre that he had
occupied since 1944, and the other in St. Tropez.
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He was made an officer of the Legion d’Honneur that same year and in 1959 he was elected
Commander of the Order des Arts et Lettres.
Camoin’s early work was influenced by the Provence tradition, striking colours applied liberally
in bold brush strokes, to the point where some of his works were wrongly attributed to Paul
Gauguin. After his travels from 1905 to 1915 in the company of Matisse and Marquet, a change
of technique became apparent as Camoin began to focus more on light than on colour. In this
respect, he and Marquet were as one, as their work dating from this period shows. Overall, his
work from what might be considered his genuinely Fauve period is targeted very much towards
the critical audience identified at the 1912 Kahnweiler Gallery exhibition and at the 1913 New
York Armory Show.
For an unknown reason, his personal success at both exhibitions provoked some form of
depression in Camoin and he promptly destroyed more than eighty of his canvases. There has
been considerable speculation as to the reasons which may lay behind this episode of depression,
but it is difficult to explain it away on purely artistic grounds; that it was provoked by his
association with the Fauves seems unlikely, given that he never fully espoused the Fauvist style
or colours.
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In the event, some of the paintings he opted to destroy were subsequently ‘retrieved’ by
collectors, a fact which triggered a successful lawsuit in 1927 against Francis Carco and resulted
in a benchmark decision to the effect that a painting which has been destroyed and thrown away
may be recovered in its existing form but may not be subsequently ‘restored’ to its original form.
In other words, the artist is and remains the sole arbiter.
After visiting Renoir in 1918, Camoin became increasingly obsessed with light and the interplay
of light and colours. As a result, he painted both in the studio and outdoors, directly from
nature. His notebooks and journals document the difficulty he experienced in achieving a
balance between the two.
Camoin’s productive life extended over fifty years up to 1964, although his output in the early
years was minimal and consisted of mainly pastels and watercolours.
His total output is around 3,000 paintings of which one third were destroyed during his bout of
depression and nearly 700 of the remainder are in major public and private collections.
Much has been written about Camoin and his important role in Twentieth Century art.
This view of the Port of Cannes was one of a series he painted in 1956 when he was holidaying
there; there is a very similar painting in the Camoin Retrospective book (published the Lausanne
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Foundation) numbered 80, also in the book is another very similar view. All three of the
paintings show the balcony differently, demonstrating that he was not looking for a perfect
image but experimenting with light and composition.
This painting was exhibited in the retrospective at the Marcel Bernheim Gallery in 1980.
Museums:
Aix-en-Provence, Albi, Algiers,
Berlin, Bonn, Boulognr-sur-Mer, Cannes,
Draguignan, Glesenkirchen, Geneva,
Grasse, Grenboble, Le Havre, Larseille,
Montpellier, New York (Museum of Modern Art, Manhattan),
Nice, Paris (Museum of Modern Art, Ville de Paris),
Quimper, Saarbrucken, Strasbourg,
Sydney, Toulon
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VIEW OF THE PORT OF CANNES, 1956
56 x 48 cm
Oil on Canvas
£39,500
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STEFANOS DASKALAKIS
Stefanos Daskalakis was born in Pireaus in 1952.
He was an assistant and sometimes model to the famous artist Yannis Tsarouchis for nine years
until Tsarouchis's death in 1989.
Daskalakis’ paintings consist of still life’s, interior spaces and, most recently, human figures and
portraiture. He reaches significant aesthetic results by combining austere, almost photographic
design with warm sensitivity giving emphasis to earthly subjects and shadows. His careful
synthetic ability is calculated to balance and hold in balance the variety of colours.
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STILL LIFE
80 x 100 cm
Oil on Canvas
£16,000
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TRUDY GOOD
Trudy Good is becoming highly sought after for her intuitive and compassionate depiction of
the human form and her romantic renderings of ballroom dancers. Her sensitive and evocative
use of pastel and charcoal is used to dramatic and emotional effect in works such as Answered
Prayer and her portraiture. Good has firmly established herself in the genre of the female figure,
standing and reclining, in moments of meditative calm and graceful self containment. Trudy has
had exhibitions of her work in Ascot, Winchester, Wimbledon and at Belgravia Gallery. The
gallery is happy to advise as regards to commissioned pieces.
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GOLDEN NO.5
138 x 103 cm
Pastel and Charcoal on Paper
£5,000
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SURRENDER NO.4
98 x 168 cm
Pastel and Charcoal on Paper
£5,500
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TRISH WYLIE
London artist, Trish Wylie, has made a name for herself with her painterly explorations of the
cinematic genre. Her previously abstract leanings took a curious turn when her love of painting
and film merged to form a series of large and colourful canvas works. In her series of Western
themed paintings, the leading stars of classic Western film take on an enigmatic yet iconic
presence. As Robin Baker, Curator of the BFI Media Teque, quoted, "These paintings melt into
the films".
Foreword by Sir Christopher Frayling
Trish Wylie takes individual moments from great Western movies - and other movies – not
necessarily the best-known ones - and gives them a big presence on the wall: presence in terms
of concept, scale, colour and technique. She seems particularly drawn to post-1950s Westerns,
which were already becoming self-conscious about the old myths and aware of themselves as
films in dialogue with other films, sites of second order meanings rather than first order
meanings. Her paintings take this process one stage further, by re-mythologizing the old frames
of film and turning them into hallowed events. Bigging them up again. Something like
Campbell's Soup Cans, only more so, more painterly, and starting with images that were mythic
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in the first place rather than stacked on supermarket shelves. The word "icon" is much abused
these days, since it became secularised and uncoupled from ritual, applied to everything from
buildings to celebrities to products to advertisements to recipes. But Trish Wylie's paintings
really do aim to be pieces of iconography, in the sense that they mediate the viewer's relationship
with contemporary figures of myth, providing in the process a hotline to the gods of the silver
screen. Norma Desmond famously says, in Billy Wilder's film "Sunset Boulevard, "I'm still big it’s the pictures that got small".
Trish Wylie could say the same and she'd be right.
Sir Christopher Frayling was Rector of the Royal College of Art and Chair of Arts Council
England. A writer and award-winning broadcaster, he has published eighteen books on aspects
of modern culture, including several on the Western film.
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CLINT EASTWOOD
120 x 48 inches
Oil on Canvas
£16,000
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LUCA BATTINI
After graduating from the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, Maestro Luca Battini studied
traditional techniques (fresco, drawing, oil painting and egg tempera emulsion) with masters
from Italy and other countries.
The period from the 1960s to the 1980s was a turbulent time in the Italian art world. The “past”
seemed to have been left behind; thought to be outdated, it no longer seemed to provide means
of expression adequate for a world where traditional artistic rules no longer applied. It was in this
period that the revisionism that began in the second half of the 19th century and continued in
phases through the 20th century reached its height. However, in those times of absolute and
absolutist negation, the foundations were laid for a creative rediscovery of the ideas that had
inspired figurative art until the early 20th century.
Luca Battini is part of the artistic movement whose greatest exponent is Maestro Pietro
Annigoni, who revisits traditional techniques in a contemporary way. This does not mean simply
reproducing traditional art in a mechanical way; rather, it means using tradition as the basis for a
new mode of realistic expression. The people Luca Battini depicts are models from present day
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but in the context of his works they become simultaneously of the past and of the present. This
is the spirit that informs Luca Battini’s work. Tradition gives him fresh inspiration to express
himself in a complete and a mature way.
The successes that characterize Luca Battini’s progression as an artist confirm the rich fertility of
his choices of style. His work is always characterized by the utmost professionalism. His
preparation is done entirely by hand using natural materials, exactly as it was done 500 years ago
or more.
He says:
“I like to think of painting as something linked profoundly to our land and
traditions, through a journey that takes us back to our deepest roots. It would be
impossible for me to set this feeling aside in my works, which lay claim to a great
heritage in the hope – rather than the expectation – of emulating that heritage. And
San Ranieri – layman and saint, a figure characteristic of his times – seems to me as
an artist a great example of this.”
Luca Battini
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SEATED NUDE WITH YELLOW TURBAN
50 x 50 cm
Egg tempera on handmade canvas
£6,000
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NUDE WITH BLUE TURBAN
48 x 90 cm
Egg tempera on handmade canvas with Lapis lazuli pure pigment.
£8,000
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GARY RAYMOND-PEREIRA
Garry Raymond-Pereira first captured the art buying public’s attention with his oil paintings of
waves and sand dunes along the Norfolk coast, an area he has had a strong connection with ever
since he spent his childhood holidays at the seaside town of Caister-On-Sea. He has since
expanded his repertoire to embrace panoramic views of the Thames and the mountains of North
Wales – and small studies of deckchairs.
Whether one of his small, directly rendered location studies or larger studio canvases, all Pereira’s
paintings start with him making studies in oil outside, on location. He resists the temptation to
work from photographs because he feels a photograph is never true to what he has seen and
doesn’t capture the colours accurately, choosing instead to spend the day at the coast (or, say, on
the bank of the Thames or looking towards the rugged slopes of Cader Idris) creating a series of
oil studies, which he takes back to his studio and often works up into larger canvasses.
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CLEARING
Oil on Canvas
90 x 150 cm
£8,000
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