All the latest summer news from Studio DG
Posted by Di Gilpin on
Welcome! It has been a truly busy time at the studio with a lot of special visitors, workshops and presentations alongside our normal design work! Delighted some of our special pieces have new homes and lots of folk are now trying out some super gansey projects following our last class here in the studio.
We are also starting to prepare for our wonderful retreat at Balcarres House at the end of September! Sheila and I popped into one of the beautiful cottages on the estate to do a little knitting this week! We are sending out all the information at present so if you would like to reserve a space please email di.gilpin1@gmail.com!
Sheila and I were thrilled to be asked by Susan Anderson of the Yarn Journal to design something for issue 6 out this fall and here is a sneak preview! Another Gansey classic in 7 sizes knitted in our beautiful Lalland Aran colour Crowdie!
We love teaching and our next event is on the 20th July for a final finishing and knitting masterclass featuring colour work! We will be looking at some special techniques for Fair Isle and Intarsia and a combination of both! There are still a couple of spaces left for those who would like to book!
Opening on the same day is a wonderful exhibition at Bowhouse which I will certainly be popping down to after our workshop to be inspired! A massive retrospective of the work of Sheila Girling and her husband Anthony Caro!
https://www.spacetobreatheexpo.com
BOWHOUSE, ST MONANS, FIFE, KY10 2DB, SCOTLAND
LAUNCH PARTY 19 JULY 2024 6-9pm
RSVP
EXHIBITION DATES
20 JULY - 5 AUGUST
&
17 AUGUST - 1 SEPTEMBER
Open every day, except Mondays
10:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Please note that the exhibition is closed between 6 - 16 August
This summer, SPACE TO BREATHE will host a selling exhibition of the ground-breaking British painter Sheila Girling (1924-2015). Over 90 of her large scale paintings and collages from the 1970s to the 2010s will showcase her enormous talent as a painter simultaneously embracing the freedom of American abstraction while remaining rooted in a distinctive British sensibility. Evident in all Girling’s work is her understanding of the power to express emotion and form through the fortuitous juxtaposition of colour, combined with her unique exploration of the materiality of paint itself.
The exhibition will include a selection of important sculptures by the renowned sculptor Sir Anthony Caro, Girling’s husband and lifelong artistic collaborator. Girling described their marriage as “a 64 year conversation about art” and they both freely admitted her influence on his work, in particular the decision to use paint and colour as an integral part of his sculptural work. It is an honour to exhibit these two individual yet deeply connected artists side by side, while focussing attention on the woman in this creative partnership.
Girling’s work is a testament to an artistic life led at the centre of the British and American avant-garde art scene from the 1960s until her death in 2015. Her and Caro's close circle included the seminal art theorist Clement Greenberg and artists Jules Olitski, Robert Motherwell and Helen Frankenthaler, to name but a few. Girling’s close friend Kenneth Noland encouraged her to switch to acrylic paint ,which she used for the rest of her life.
Standing in front of her compelling works, one cannot help but admire her artistic individuality, emotional range and immediacy. Both Girling's large canvasses and smaller paper collages dazzle in their intensity. They are abstract and yet grounded in figuration, evoking the natural world while expressing the dynamic qualities of the media themselves.