The Artist Gardener: Fletcher Prentice and Dawn Stacey

Following the success of the exhibition 'The Painted Garden', we're returning to the garden as creative, expressive space, exploring the enduring influence of horticulture and gardening on visual art. Fletcher Prentice will present a new collection of paintings, celebrating the vibrancy and energy of a summer garden, along with richly painted and beautifully observed flower still-life. Dawn Stacey's intricate, yet delicate works explore the natural rhythms and patterns that are woven through nature. In her recent work, she has explored the pleasing geometry of a garden; she paints pathways contrasted with frothing petals and leaves.

'Visual art and horticulture are two disciplines that share a long association.  Claude Monet was perhaps most famously influenced by his garden at Giverny,' says Sarah Wiseman, gallery director. 'With later twentieth century examples of gardening artists including Derek Jarman and Barbara Hepworth, gardening lends itself naturally to painting as a visual stimulus, but there are wider, more deeply felt implications to consider.  Gardening is cyclical; in a garden we witness new growth, but also its decline and decay as the seasons change.'

'We are tuned in more than ever with our outdoor environments, and there is a renewed interest in nature and the outdoors, especially with more people now working from home. Gardens in their many forms - be it a public park or a back patio - have become essential places of refuge.'    

Playing with composition, colour and texture, gardeners are often likened to artists and indeed many artists, writers and poets are famously keen gardeners and naturalists. Claude Monet, Vita Sackville-West, Emily Dickinson and many others all took inspiration and comfort from observing and growing their gardens and a continuous cyclical process.

Exquisite new blown glass vessels by Michèle Oberdieck will be exhibited alongside Fletcher Prentice and Dawn Stacey's paintings in The Artist Gardener. Softly round shapes are inspired by natural forms and processes.