THREE ARTISTS OF DISTINCTION
June/July 2023
Front Cover Images:
Gerry Dudgeon - Summer Glow, acrylic on canvas, 50 x 50 cm -£1,500
Douglas Gray - Luciano’s Kiosk, oil on panel, 28 x 20.3 cm - £1,795
Mike Bernard RI - Fishing Boats, Pittenweem, mixed media, 50 x 50 cm - £2,250
Gerry Dudgeon - A Way Through the Trees Acrylic on canvas, 51 x 61 cm, £1,850THREE ARTISTS OF DISTINCTION
MIKE BERNARD ri ∙ GERRY DUDGEON ∙ DOUGLAS GRAY
Your Invitation to the Private View
Saturday, 24th June
11.00am – 4.30pm
Sunday, 25th June
12 noon – 3.00pm
The Exhibition continues through to Saturday, 15th July
Wednesday to Friday 10.30am – 4.30pm
Saturday 11.00am – 3.00pm
THREE ARTISTS OF DISTINCTION
Travel is the main common factor that these three artists share. All three are in the habit of exploring Europe, including the British Isles, but they all travel further afield. Mike Bernard occasionally ventures into the Far East, and Gerry Dudgeon often features locations in Morocco as well as his country of birth, India, while Douglas Gray also includes the Far East and often favours New York. However, stylistically, they vary considerably, yet their use of colour allows their work to hang together in an exhibition context. The two most representational of the trio, Mike Bernard and Douglas Gray, are both drawn to well peopled towns and cityscapes, the two of them loving the type of locations that draw visitors from all over the world.
European city streets, bars and cafés are a distinct favourite subject in common, but Mike Bernard develops his composition through the use of mixed media including collage while Douglas Gray’s exhibits are pure oil.
Gerry Dudgeon’s work is the most contrasting in this group. Quite obviously more abstract than his co-exhibitors here, his paintings concentrate on landscape form and colour, the occasional ancient architectural feature, but not figures. His canvases are highly ambient, sometimes with echoes of ancient history from, on the one hand, his home county of Dorset, to myths or legends that creep into his Greek subjects.
One remaining feature that these three artists share is that they have successfully earned a living from full time paintings for decades.
John Davies June 2023
GERRY DUDGEON (b.1952)
DOUGLAS GRAY ( b.1965)
MIKE BERNARD RI ( b.1957)
Gerry Dudgeon studied fine art at Camberwell College of Art in the mid to late 1970’s, graduating with First Class Honours after which he went on to study a Masters in Fine Art at Reading University on a course run by the celebrated St Ives painter Terry Frost. Later he won a Boise Travelling Scholarship from the Slade which took him to New York to study American Abstract Expressionism. Over the last twenty-five years Gerry has developed a unique style of painting featuring the landscapes of his home county of Dorset, parts of France, Greece, Morocco and India (where he was born). Examples of his work feature in corporate collection at home and abroad and are also included in the Longleat House collection.
Douglas Gray highly atmospheric paintings of locations from Great Britain, France, Italy, New York and further afield stem from his early years as an illustrator, working for such clients as Saatchi and Saatchi, Warner Brothers and creating book jacket covers for Jackie Collins. He has become something of a specialist in town and cityscapes, one the one hand grand vistas but painted on a domestic scale, on the other hand more intimate views of people meeting at café’s in Paris or Rome for example, or waiting for a gondola in Venice. What sets his work apart is a sophistication in his use of oil, both in the mark-making and the fluidity of the paint. It is these credentials that led Douglas Gray being commissioned to paint a view of the Thames for the Savoy Hotel, London, a work which is now on permanent display in the hotel’s renowned River Room.
Mike Bernard has been the subject of some 40 solo exhibitions at 14 different galleries, as well as featuring in numerous group exhibitions at establishments such as The Royal Academy and the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour. He also has many Awards to his name, including the British Institute Prize and the Landseer Prize at the Royal Academy and the Laing Landscape Painting Award to name but a few. His work also features in many publications. Mike Bernard’s individual style of images achieved with collage and mixed media have become instantly recognisable and widely known.
The artist travels a good deal throughout the British Isles and Europe, as well as the Far East, capturing scenes for his paintings.
