In October 2019 Jonathan Cooper will be holding the gallery’s second joint exhibition with painter Harriet Bane and ceramicist Georgine Warne. Working from their studios in Guernsey and Norfolk, respectively, both artists delight in portraying animals in their natural habitats, including native birds and more exotic creatures such as lions, monkeys, and elephants.
The paintings of Harriet Bane are characterised by a calm stillness, and a harmony of composition born from her early training in theatre design. Often focusing on a single animal, its environment suggested rather than fully delineated in the painting’s background, her paintings are imbued with an iconic quality. Working on a gessoed ground, Bane first applies a layer of acrylic upon which she builds the multifarious colours and textures of fur or feathers in watercolour. Usually intimate in scale, many of her paintings depict the small birds that she observes in the Guernsey landscape, while several in this exhibition represent a new departure for the artist as she works to a larger, more monumental size.
A ceramicist and printmaker, Georgina Warne combines both art forms in her sculptures. Working from her Norfolk studio, she prints and hand-colours their ceramic surface with idiosyncratic motifs inspired by poetry, folk songs, and the natural world. Each unique piece is lovingly crafted using clays of the highest quality, and joyfully conveys a narrative that invites the viewer on an imaginative journey through the British countryside and beyond.
