Two artists, Ruth Bunnewell and Louise Holgate, will be exhibiting their paintings in the heart of Highgate Village, North London from 20th May – 13th June.

More than 35 beautifully presented landscape paintings will be on display. Ruth Bunnewell’s dramatic, bright and bold futuristic paintings are teamed with the smaller more intimate work of Louise Holgate.

This exhibition demonstrates the perception of a landscape and the inspirational qualities of the countryside that surrounds us. It is captured, simplified and personalised according to the qualities that each artist finds important - shape, colour, tone and light are interpreted in two very different ways.

“Ruth Bunnewell uses the entire spectrum of colours in her attention grabbing, somewhat futuristic paintings of the Norfolk landscape, and her searing colours are even “brighter and bolder” in this new selection of work of winding roads and particularly trees. Indeed trees, either solitary or in groupings, and the different atmospheres they can convey are a preoccupation which suggests the significance of the forest in fairy tales and Little Red Riding Hood.

Ruth often paints on a dramatic scale, enjoying the expansiveness and story-telling possibilities of triptychs or diptychs, though each painting must stand alone. Her work has a filmic quality, sometimes the Scandinavian darkness and atmosphere of a Chekhov play or, as in ‘Mousehold Seen from Barrack Street’ the feel of Japanese animations. In her painting ‘Twilight Trees’, the trees assume the aspect of striding figures, sculptural like Giacomettis. Movement is key, as is a sense of travel, a road trip, the suggestion of depth and middle distance over her territory. Ruth Bunnewell is exceptionally good at introducing pervading tones of emotional light and shade in her paintings. There is always more to Ruth's penetrating, narrative paintings than meets the eye.

Louise Holgate's striking semi-abstract paintings representing quintessential English landscapes speak persuasively to us. Contemplative and intimate in scale, Louise's work is a reading of the terrain. She is particularly drawn to the contours of ancient landscapes and to capturing something of their mystery. And in this, though completely contemporary, they also exhibit an affinity with the post war artists and their fascination with archaeology and the sculptural monuments of our ancestors. These mellow, evocative works capture a pastoral world of patchwork fields, the semblance of a dwelling, as if seen from the bird's eye view. Governed by a preoccupation with colour, form and space, Louise's use of mixed media, charcoal, acrylic and ink on board, makes these pictures as much a drawing as a painting. Her palette changes according to place and season be it, the acid colours of fields of rape in flower, rusting tin roofs or ubiquitous white cottages of Wiltshire, the Wye Valley and her home place of Somerset. Louise studied Environmental Design/Architecture at Chelsea School of Art and then at The Royal College of Art and worked as an architect/designer in London.”

Jane Hill 2015