Chris Roskell: Things i wouldn't want to see in the sky 4.

Chris Roskell marks arrival with Stables show

Renowned abstract artist Chris Roskell has moved to Hastings where he marks his arrival with a show of recent works at the Stables art gallery. Siobhan O’Hanlon went to renew acquaintance with his work.

Chris recently moved here from his home town of Harlow where he had his studio at Parndon Mill for several years. He studied fine art in the sixties and early seventies, a time when the whole validity of painting was being hotly debated. Indeed, towards the end of his time at art school, his work moved away from conventional painting towards performance, leading him to work with dancers from the London Contemporary Dance School.

Since then Chris has spent time carrying out specialist decorating commissions on site, using his craft skills as a painter, as well as developing fine art painting in the studio. In Hastings he has restored the old bakery he now lives in to a family home and working studio.

This solo show of recent works displays his trademark imposing and atmospheric style; dynamically the works reflect observations of the world around him and his life here beside the sea.

These large-scale works sit beautifully in the newly modernized gallery at the Stables, where the openness of space complements these monumental pieces.

The crisp clarity of Sticky fingers, in which the use of colours, a Prussian blue, opaque red and glowing yellow, arrest the viewer and draw them in.

The mystery of a Midsummer night’s dream is a magical world of psychedelic colour calmed by a pure strip of duck egg blue, the whole blended effortlessly.

At the seaside has washes of sky falling into the depths of the sea, which is moody, moving and flowing, broken only by crazed splashes of red and cream.

Small squall off shore has an oriental mysticism, with pale soft lemon yellow floating on the surface as two angel fish flow through.

Chris’s works are complemented by Michelle Bennett’s fantastic new collection of ceramics inspired by nature and the sea. The two cabinets of ceramics form a cosy corner of square-modeled Japanese-style vessels, blues and greens, sunbursts and splashes. These pieces are organic and flowing, the evocative mother and child figures bringing a calm and peace to the vibrancy of Chris’s work.

Chris Roskell, Michelle Bennett Stables Theatre and Art Gallery, The Bourne, Hastings TN34 3BD. To 26 July, Mon-Sat, 10am-2pm, 6-8pm (open Sat evenings only when there is a theatre performance), Sun 10.30am-2pm (3pm when there is a matinee performance). Tel 01424 423221.

Stables website

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