Colour and light Winifred Nicholson exhibition

Kettle's Yard Gallery
July 28 - September 23

Kettle's Yard Gallery is celebrating summer with an exhibition of the paintings of Winifred Nicholson (1893-1981), one of the best loved and deeply admired English painters of the 20th century.

Winifred Nicholson's subjects were landscape, flowers and her family. But above all the work is about light and colour. Jim Ede, the founder of Kettle's Yard, wrote: "She paints a pot of flowers, and in it you feel the laws of universal birth - it isn't just these flowers growing - it is the whole life of nature."

Having married the painter Ben Nicholson in 1920, she worked with him at Lugano, Switzerland and, after 1924, in Cumbria, frequently visiting London and Paris. Ben acknowledged her as a strong influence but their marriage broke up in 1930 and Winifred took her children to Paris, where she experimented in abstraction. On the eve of war, she returned to Britain, dividing her time between Bankshead, which remained her home until her death, and her father's house at Boothby.

From there in later years she wrote to Jim Ede: "When one is young one is satisfied with a flower petal or a sparkle. Now I want more. I want the rainbow scale of the flower and the reason and the travel of the sparkle - and most of all a long quiet time of intense peace and uninterrupted thought - none of which one can get."

The exhibition spans the full range of her 60-year career, from the early landsapes and flower paintings to the later explorations of prismatic colour. An 84-page catalogue accompanying the exihibition has been written by Jon Blackwood. It traces the development of her work, through her engagement with colour and light, spirituality and her Christian Science beliefs, and the modern movement in London and Paris.