After a year of work and gallons of paint, Sue Pomery Wilks has produced yet another astonishing exhibition of paintings to be seen in Tenby this month. Acrylic paint, used straight from the tub, is applied thickly with a palette knife in a variety of marks and directions to give the texture of marram grass on the dunes, or smooth slabs of cliff rocks or the roughness of crumbling ruins. When pressed and layered flat the paint shows the movements of waves and tides, and when flatter still becomes the distant hills and skies. The paintings can be read like braille. Pembrokeshire is the predominant subject: the coast's seas and sands, dunes and rocks; the county's castles, coastal cottages and farms; the countryside's woods, meadows and waters. Tenby too is represented - in views to clifftop houses and hotels, the beaches, Castle Hill and St. Catherine's. As a mature student, Sue undertook a sculpture degree course at Carmarthen College of Art and Design, resisting the push towards conceptual art and returning to her first love, painting, after graduation. Ten years on, Sue's work has developed a surety and strength. There is nothing tentative in her large paintings. Often simple in composition, the excitement is in the textures and colours of each piece. Pembrokeshire is painted with passion and with considerable panache. It's a brave man who'll exhibit alongside Sue Pomery Wilks, and Simon Gaiger is just such a man. Bringing 20 sculptures in wood and metal, constructed and hewn from materials and objects found around him, often from the managed woodland, Simon's work will occupy the floor space of the gallery and garden. His work both comes from and describes the elements, forces and patterns in the landscape. It is concerned with how man changes and harnesses nature, and how nature in time reclaims the sites of man's industry. Huge chunks of wood, roughly shaped with a chainsaw, are successively refined to become sensuous sculptural forms, oiled or waxed to a silky smooth finish or unique seats for inside or out. Simon describes his processes: "I tend to work instinctively with wood; a material that in its wild form makes many decisions for you. Its natural twisting and turning, its flow, asks to be followed rather than diverted. I like its roughness and rawness, and do not try to disguise the natural processes but to emphasize and work with them." Metal is heated and hammered and bent to produce small and large freestanding or hanging sculptures, both figurative and abstract. Of metal, Simon says: "Form usually comes first... found objects, often agricultural implements of iron and steel, can give definite clues as to what they will become...and more humour seems to come out in these pieces." Many of these metal sculptures react to external stimuli, moving with the wind or by being turned or rearranged. The exhibition of Sue Pomery Wilks, comprising 30 large acrylics and 20 smaller works in other media, and Simon Gaiger's sculptures will be shown from tomorrow (Saturday) until Thursday, June 14. Both artists will be available in the gallery to answer questions about the work from 2 pm to 4 pm tomorrow when visitors will be offered wine, or tea and coffee. Art Matters Gallery, in South Parade, Tenby (next to the fire station) is open from 10 am to 5 pm every day, except Wednesdays. For further information see the website http://www.artmatters.org.uk">www.artmatters.org.uk or email [email protected]">[email protected] or telephone (01834) 843375.
