The East Anglia Group at The Peter Pears Gallery, Aldeburgh

The range of work on show is wide, from very figurative paintings to abstract works, and including imaginative paintings and a variety of perspectives on the real world. This promises to be a varied and interesting exhibition with works for sale at affordable prices to suit different budgets. Fifteen artists are exhibiting.

PETER PEARS GALLERY
152 High street, Aldeburgh, Suffolk. IP15 5AQ

The Royal Academy Schools today describe themselves as a school of contemporary fine art that offers up to 17 artists each year an opportunity to participate in an intense 3 year programme. Founded in 1768 the Royal Academy Schools provided a free place of study for painters and sculptors. This tradition has endured to the present day.

Formerly the teaching and philosophy were academic. Names such as William Slake, Sir Joshua Reynolds, JMW Turner, John Constable and John Everett Millais have studied there. More recently Richard Hamilton, Anthony Caro and John Hoyland.

Today a small intake of carefully chosen students continue to benefit from a more contemporary education which continues to promote individuality and personal vision.

The East Anglia Group consists of artists who graduated from the Royal Academy Schools as postgraduates at different times since the 1950s, (it continues to welcome new members), who have now settled in East Anglia.

lt is a disparate group, both geographically, scattered from Norwich to Essex, and disparate also in their work and in the paths their lives have taken since leaving the RA schools. This makes for a disparate show, in an excellent and very lively way; otherwise you could say a diverse show, or a very rich show.

The uniting theme (and the title of the show), “From The Mind’s Eye”, is generous in allowing each artist to play to their own strength; and it has the potential to inform the viewer with a knowledge of the range of subject matter on show; from the small, personal, intimate moment (Jocelyn Wickham), to the sublime traditional landscape, (Annie Hudson), and celebrating the interior, (Robin Warnes). And the potential also to remind that after all, all of these are a celebration of colour and its organisation on a flat plane.

Works in the show will range from the abstract, (Claudia Boese), to the very figurative, (M J Matt), which promises to be engaging for the viewer.

What unites these very different artists is the joy of paint and the engagement with subject matter; whatever reaches “The Mind’s Eye”.