Chatham Works Exhibition - Nick Evans

Nick Evans

This wonderful exhibition is currently showing at the Nucleus Arts Centre Gallery in Chatham (272 High Street) until the 17^th November.

Chatham landmarks are clearly depicted with colour and drama. Chatham and its icons are boldly represented with fond familiarity and exuberant colours in their surround.

The artists selects just a few significant places, ones with presence and maybe their beauty somewhat hidden, such as the Brook Theatre.

Is this really our home town? Yes it is; not only the landmarks, but also the atmosphere and its not gloomy either, rather it’s exciting and dramatic.

Of course Chatham is not known as a beauty spot or for its artistic attributes, but at this exhibition, artist Nick Evans captures from his Chatham studio what we know and love about the town, so impressive are the outer representations, we can feel its familiarity and admire them too.

Chatham is not without its victims of life, it’s a hard town with a history of hardship, such that it was an inspiration for many of Dickens novels. Artist Nick Evans demonstrates an understanding and appreciation of this essence. In one corner of the Gallery; as you travel around the paintings of our beloved town there are two people (opposite the painting of flowers) a man and a woman in separate paintings, they are naked. Their vulnerability for all to see, these are our Chatham people, a boy and a girl.

The two pictures bring to a close our journey through Chatham and there follows in the same style, paintings of beautiful places in Cornwall perhaps representing our dreams of escape.

It’s a wonderful and moving exhibition, one that tells a story (or three).

CathArtic Art and room to show it

There is good news; at last, it is something I have wanted to do for a long time, I have finally attracted some funding to put on an art exhibition by six or possibly seven artists who have suffered some form of severe mental illness and who use art as a way of expressing the emotional pain, and can now show off their work to everyone, in Chatham.

The exhibition will most likely be called 'The Art of Recovery' unless I can think of a better title. It will have as a common thread; the classics, i.e work that is influenced by classical masters or has a classic 'feel' to it. The majority of the work I do and have done has been while listening to some lovely classical music, if you get into the music, this can help to bring out the emotions. No - one would necessarily know of my underlying influences or the accompanying music I listen to by looking at my work.

There will also be live performances by a classical guitarist; Nina Rideout. She has performed at the National Gallery in London to an art exhibition, so it is great honour for us to have her perform at our exhibition in Chatham.

There will be a painting at the Exhibition by a famous artist called Maureen Oliver, her work is really very good. The piece she is willing to lend us for the exhibition is a painting she has done in oil of Vincent Van Gogh painting his starry night from what looks like a mental hospital (in his life he did many of his works from such places), and in an open window looking in on him there are many people huddled together in groups and looking on in a judgemental and disapproving manner, but Vincent carries on with his work despite this and despite the bandage around his head and over his ear. It is a most inspiring painting, and will hopefully be the piece that sets the tone for the rest of the works.

As well as Maureen Oliver, there will be other artists, John Excell, Chris Barchard, Ian Melville and hopefully something from Adam Halpern.

Adam is my partner in crime in the pottery group. We both love pottery, positively potty about it. When we work with clay, forms start to take hold themselves, the shapes make suggestions to us and we work with the clay rather than trying to force it into something that we want, or what we want it to end up being. Both myself and Adam have the same approach to clay modeling, the pieces we make have a life of their own to us. We also have a good laugh in each others company in the group, and by gum I am really going to miss it when the group stops which is likely to be in the next couple of weeks.

The venue of the exhibition will be the Nucleus Ats Centre, just off the High Street Chatham (past in shops and on the same side) It will start with an opening night and private view ( refreshments included ) on Thursday 29th October and run for three weeks until the 18th November.

I will put some of my work up on here, my blog, but there is just so much to do, most of the photographs of my work will need to be re-done as they are poor quality pictures. Then the paintings will probably have to be re - framed so that they can be in uniform and orderly frames which will look much better on exhibition, rather than the hodge podge style frames they are in now. Oh me oh my so much work to do.




Bacchaus(inspired by a Reubens painting)