This year, feeling slightly rudderless without our usual January date at the Majlis Gallery in Dubai, we have yet to decide which direction to take for fresh inspiration in sunnier climes.
However, early 2023 found us busy – as booksellers!
You may know know that John’s lockdown drawings, sketches, doodles and paintings of his Malawi memories, finally combined, with many ex-Malawi friends’ anecdotes and tales, to make a handsome 150 page book: ‘Deemed to belong: Malawi Days 1960s and 70s’.
With three hundred copies already sold, we’re very pleased to see the profit from sales go to support selected Malawian youngsters into vocational training.
Bright early spring weather saw John spending lots of time sketching in his favourite places: The Brecon Beacons, Black Mountains – with its famous Gospel Pass, and the River Wye, resulting in some exciting work.
We feel lucky to receive great support from the Oriel Cric Gallery. It’s upstairs at the visitor info centre in Crickhowell. The Cric Open Exhibition in Spring saw John, not for the first time, awarded a prestigious Watercolour Prize. His work is regularly shown here in monthly changing exhibitions. Tel: 01873 813667
Bevere Gallery, Worcester, also carry a regular stock of JH paintings, please ask if they don’t happen to be on show when you visit. Tel: 01905 754484.
Welcoming private commissions, John finds they often take him to places that give him a fresh angle on a familiar view. We recently drove for miles searching for a view of Wittenham Clumps, Oxfordshire – seeing only one, not the two Clumps commissioned… aha! – Spotted them as we were about to head for home!
A little flurry of group exhibitions coming up:
1 – 31 August: Great Witley Court Tea rooms
11.00am – 4.30pm daily
Tel: 01299896016
witleytearooms.co.uk
15 & 16 September: Hartlebury Castle
Heritage Free Weekend. 11.00am – 5.00pm
Tel: 01299250416
hartleburycastle.com
26 October – 5 November: Deans Chapel, Worcester Cathedral
Monday to Saturday 10.00 am – 5.00pm. Sunday: 10.00am – 3.00pm
Tel: 01905732900
worcestercathedral.org.uk
Village views are now ‘on the blocks’ as John prepares for Inkberrow’s Village Green Art Fair.
Now an annual event after starting as the ‘Lockdown Art Fair’ in 2020.
This year, about twenty local artists and crafters, will be ready to show their work. They will set up on chairs, tables, step-ladders and rugs – whatever is easy to pack up and run with if the weather takes a turn for the worse. But with a good pub at each end of the Village Green, an excellent village shop with a coffee machine, there’s plenty of shelter, rain or shine. Welcome to Inkberrow!
Now numbering twenty, including some clever crafters, John takes the opportunity at this event to show work that wouldn’t normally go to the galleries he supplies: Village views, Africa, and his infrequent but popular wildlife paintings. Plus of course, landscapes near and far.
Looking for reference, it’s interesting to go through years of John’s sketchbooks. Memories jogged of friends and other wild things we spent time with in Africa. To search for a particular elephant, the profile of a mountain, or a baobab tree… You will have the chance to see some sketchbooks at the Village Green
Art Fair. On Bank Holiday Monday 28 August 10.00am – 6.00pm. Flexible in case of rain.