Fifty Years in the Making: Two Lambourn artists and a Hungerford potter who have been friends for more than 50 years to show together in Ramsbury

Two Lambourn artists and a Hungerford potter who have been friends for more than 50 years are to show together in a gallery for the first time.

Fifty Years in the Making at a Ramsbury gallery features paintings by David H Jones and Judith Jones together with ceramics by Diana Barraclough.

David and Judith met at Bristol College of Art in the early 1970’s and met Diana shortly after their move to the area.

After art college David and Judith left city life with the intension of living the rural idle and producing artwork. However, needs be, they established themselves as restorers and painters of decorated furniture and objects for interiors. They bought a property, raised three children, and when in the late 1980’s their business practically collapsed with the recession they took on teaching classes for Adult Education to supplement their income.

David started teaching painting and life drawing and Judith Iyengar Yoga. David returned to his own painting practice and in a long association with Open Studios collaborated with Diana in curating many exhibitions. Judith after years of commitment to teaching yoga has for several years returned to her own art practice.

David and Judith’s paintings share influences from British and American abstract artists, with an interest in; application, colour, texture, pattern and process. For both painting is a dialogue with an idea from which a prolonged feedback process of action and reaction with the artwork allows the painting to evolve.

Judith’s calligraphic continuous rhythmic lines curve and circle, overlap and weave into each other creating lively and colourful paintings.

David’s abstract paintings explore the physical and nourishing properties of colour. Inspired from the changing palette of the seasons he creates colourful and richly textured surfaces to uplift and enliven your spirits. With a return to oil paint he will be showing large reworked paintings abandoned in the 1970s, along with recent work.

Diana Barraclough studied ceramics at Bournmouth and started her career as assistant to Mary Rich and David Leach, but soon set up her own pottery and developed a very individual and colourful style of sculptural work. Ceramic totems which tell stories and reflect cultures are among her most popular current work, in which much of her inspiration is gathered from her love of Cornwall, its coast, sea-birds and lush sub-tropical gardens.

This inspiration is used to great effect in her joyous, painterly use of coloured stains and glazes. And after so many years she still remains enamoured with clay’s versatility and the scope it gives the potter: “you can slab it, coil it, dent it, squeeze it, model it, throw it”… and she does.

The show runs at The Golden Lion Gallery in the Square at Ramsbury from April 14-26,open daily 2pm-5pm.