Neil Cuthbert BCA(Hons), GRAD. DIP., MFA

Part of the joys of dealing with artists is when we get to visit their studios. Artists studios range from the dimly lit back bedroom, a garden shed to purpose built detached buidings with serious space! But each is a delight and gives away as much about the artists themselves as their working technique. Plus you get to see their props and influences, scattered about, pinned to walls and if your lucky a flick through a sketch book or two. For me sketch books often show the real talent of an artist, the mapping out of a works and hows its composition develops.

 

One such visit, and flick through his sketch books, was to Neil Cuthbert who is now back living in England, in deepest rural Suffolk to be exact after years of living, painting and exhibiting in Australia. His studio is full of the usual and unusual artists props; plaster casts of heads, limbs, a macquette and a skeleton! Books, compositional studies, unfinished works, works in progress, works on the back boiler and paints, palettes and brushes, the smell of turps and the clucking of chickens outside the rural studio door.

 

This is the first time we have exhibited Neil's work in the gallery, with influences from outside his window, his marine background and Greek mythology all tell a fascinating story and take the viewer on a journey into another persons mind and world.