Paragon Gallery features a wide range of artists from across the UK, as well as those based in and inspired by Gloucestershire.
Ranging from watercolours to striking oil paintings and an array of mixed mediums, as well as ceramics and glassware – there’s plenty to uplift and inspire.
Here, SoGlos discovers what you can buy this summer at Montpellier’s Paragon Gallery and takes a closer look at nine new pieces gracing the gallery walls.
Upper-price artwork from Paragon Gallery
Sundance by Alice Cescatti
Alice Cescatti grew up in New Zealand. Fascinated by the interaction between
the dramatic landscapes and intense light of the South Pacific, she appreciated
the land’s remoteness and the quality of its vast, uninhabited space.
Alice’s water-gilding process is extraordinarily complex, requiring the
application of many initial layers of sanded gesso and clay onto wooden panels.
This is followed by applying individual leaves of silver or gold onto the clay
surface using a specialist method dating back to ancient Egyptian tomb
paintings.
The Other Side of Winter I by Iryna Yermolova
The work of Iryna Yermolova is often described as fluid, luminous and intuitive. A colourist of exceptional skill, Yermolova credits oil painting with entirely transforming her life and outlook.
A regular exhibitor
at the Royal Institute of Oil Painters’ annual show at the Mall Galleries in
London, she has been an integral member of the Paragon stable for seven years.
Swallows in a Frame by Adam Binder
One of Britain’s leading wildlife sculptors, Adam Binder has a signature fluid style of simple lines and flowing forms, depicting both movement and an emotion that beautifully captures the essence of his subjects. Working primarily in bronze with rich earthy patinas, Binder’s work is recognised and collected all over the world.
Mid-price artwork from Paragon Gallery
Remember This by Melanie Cormack-Hicks
Cormack-Hicks's paintings speak of colour, energy and light.
She paints the landscapes she loves, working from her studio in the Cotswolds.
Her subject matter includes the majestic woodlands and sweeping meadows that
surround her home. She frequently travels to Scotland, Devon and Cornwall to
paint and gather inspiration for her breathtaking river scenes and powerful
seascapes.
In recent years she has served as the Artist in Residence at WWT
Slimbridge.
Bycross by Andy Watt
Colour is central to Watt's work. He seeks to draw with paint, making marks with brushes, painting knives, pieces of card, sponges and anything else that might be at hand to serve the purpose.
Watt considers art as a language; how he looks at and reads the information before him is broken down and reconstructed using marks, shape, surface and colour – a form of vocabulary that develops into visual compositions.
Having taught art for 24 years, mostly at Cheltenham Ladies' College, he has returned to the studio to explore and share his own way of interpreting aspects of the world.
The Three Sisters - Be Indian Buy Indian (Market Pink) by Natasha Kumar
Art and India are in Kumar’s genes. On her mother’s English side she comes from a line of established artists, her father’s Indian heritage she traces back to Kashmir and Afghanistan. Her work is a dazzling exploration of colour and line as seen through the prism of contemporary Indian life.
Kumar divides her time between a rural farmhouse with dedicated painting and printmaking studios, an intense studio practice in London, and increasingly longer regular working trips to India to gather images and ideas. Kumar has a dedicated and growing following of collectors worldwide.
Lower-price artwork from Paragon Gallery
Caliban by Mark Stopforth
A painter of great lyricism and sensitivity, Stopforth captures the majesty and
drama of the British landscape at its wildest, while expressing a profound
reverence for the sublime tradition.
His work over the past 20 years has been devoted to those vistas that are
associated with the untamed and wild atmosphere that can be found in the moors,
fens, fells and estuaries of Britain. He has carried impressions of the
sublime in the landscape that were left on him as a child growing up in the
Fens of East Anglia, impressions that are still relevant to his work today.
A Song and a Dance by Zoë Ashbrook
Inspired by memories of land, sea and sky, Ashbrook's aim is not to replicate
scenes but to transfer into the work a sense of the experience of place, memory
and the passage of time.
Working in layers, Ashbrook's paintings evolve organically through a repetition of adding and subtracting, scrapes, scratches, delicate and bold movements. Providing the opportunity for unexpected developments, serendipitous responses emerge while creating a rich tapestry of mark-making and history, much like the landscape itself.
Somewhere Only We Know I by Clarisa Rakos
Rakos's multilayered paintings draw upon a fascination with the spiritual world. Standing stones, dolmens, moais and menhirs, carvings, rupestrian painting, tattoos and body art, colours and textures have all influenced her work.
She is a self-taught British artist based in London, born to a Chilean mother and British father. She grew up in Amsterdam before moving to Chile at the age of 19.
Having spent much of her life in Chile, the art of the nation’s indigenous people has also been a key inspiration. Her artwork is abstract and intuitive.
