From 17th May - 17th June 2013 we will hold an exhibition of Abstract paintings by American painter Monroe Hodder, Professor Maurice Cockrill RA and self taught Brighton born artist Dion Salvador Lloyd. We will be showing approximately twenty paintings by these three leading artists.

Monroe Hodder, in the words of a critic: ‘barely needs the natural light of a gallery, so brightly do her canvases burn with colour.’ She uses fields of tiered horizontal bands which ‘test the chromatic limits of abstract painting without eliminating associations to landscape and memory.’

Be seduced by Monroe Hodder’s chromatic sensations, but don’t be fooled by them. Her career spans a number of chapters in the history of American art. Inspired by a vast web of experiences, her work is charged these days with the urban intensity and stimulation of life in London, together with the peace and solitude of a studio in Colorado.

Rothko said that a picture “lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer”. I find Monroe’s paintings have a power to engage with us. Her work encapsulates a reconciliation of opposites: a balance between the spiritual and the sensual, the structural and the painterly, discipline and passion. Her most powerful language is colour. Tangerine, puce and crimson jostle together; turquoise, ultramarine and yellow form striking layers. Drips of colour disturb the geometry. Supposedly difficult colours work together to form stimulating and surprising harmonies.

Monroe says “My impulse is to fill up an abstract repetitive structure with the delicious disorder of paint. My work is a child of minimalism but the rules are bent and the grid has gone awry. I paint in large, messy stripes that wobble around and go out of bounds. My interest is in the ways I can use colour inside and across bands. I like to confound myself with infinite possibilities, choosing a colour such as blue and running other hues over, under and right through it.” Geometric structure is a necessary starting point for Monroe,

After studying at Vasser, Monroe Hodder worked at the San Francisco Art Institute and the Arts Students’ League in New York. She taught painting at various schools in San Francisco. Her experience of working as assistant to the Mexican artist, Manuel Neri, at the San Francisco Art Institute brought her into contact with Clifford Still and Mark Rothko. Through her involvement with Neri came an affiliation with the Bay Area Figurative School in California, including such artists as Richard Diebenkorn and Elma Bischoff. Monroe and her husband Fred have lived in San Francisco for twenty years, and have travelled a great deal.

Monroe seldom paints without listening to music. Her passions range from Bach to the Blues and she cites Carl Jenkins and Jobi Talbot as inspirations. There are harmonic elements to her work which witness to her musical sensitivity. These beautiful, abstract works arise directly from personal experience. The layers of paint release the geometry from the prosaic and the intellectual into an explosion of colour. Look carefully at these glorious, seductive, luminous paintings.

Professor Dr. Maurice Cockrill, RA , FBA (born 8 October 1936) is a British painter and poet. Born in Hartlepoole, country Durham, he studied at Wrexham School of Art, north east Wales, then Denbigh Technical College and later the University of Reading from 1960-4. In Liverpool where he lived for nearly twenty years since 1964, he taught at Liverpool college of Art and Liverpool Polytechnic. He was a central figure in Liverpool’s artistic life, regularly exhibiting at the Walker Art Gallery, before his departure for London in 1982. Cockrill’s Liverpool work was in line with that of Sam Walsh and Adrian Henri employing Pop and photo- realist styles, but later he moved towards Romantic Expressionism, as it was shown in his retrospective at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool in 1995. His poetry was published in magazines such as “Ambit” and “Poetry Review”.

He was the keeper of the Royal Academy, and as such manages the RA Schools of the Establishment as well as being a member of the Board and Executive Committee. 

British artist Dion Salvador Lloyd was born in Brighton in 1967. His work has been exhibited widely across the UK and in 2011 had been selected for the Royal Academy “Summer Exhibition”, Discerning Eye, RWA in Bristol and ROI at the Mall Galleries, London. He currently lives and works in Brighton, UK as a full time practicing artist.

Working in oils, mark making and texture are as essential to Lloyd’s work as is the tone and palette chosen. Having a deep connection and a fascination with the natural world Lloyd paints ‘global paintings’, creating each piece without using any reference.

Lloyd pushes out his internal dramas and feelings onto the canvas, not in a way that demands to be heard, but rather, in a quiet, modest way. Through his work he seeks to understand himself and his world, each surface very much like a page in a diary, where his most intimate feelings are registered and recorded. He then invites us, the audience, to witness these places that he has been and seen, never demanding understanding, simply to share and to see what we find of ourselves within them. When an individual discovers his works they are thrown into a layered and complex world of exploration. Exploration of their own imagination as well as exploration of the artist himself, who draws upon music, nature, light, beauty and decay for inspiration.

Engaging with music in the studio, the work created over time and in many stages is a deeply personal experience. Having not attended any formal school of art Lloyd has held a grim determination to master the medium of paint, to bend it to his will, to push it beyond his own or anyone else's expectations, to see what paint can become when worked, pushed and chiseled. It is not just the image created, but also its depth, shape and contour, a visceral finish that makes the viewer want to reach out and touch, as well as to look. In Lloyd's work we find a tangible connection to the surface of things, the weather beaten complexion of our world. He is self-taught.

Belgravia Gallery
45 Albemarle Street
London W1S 4JL United Kingdom
Ph. +44 (0)20 7495010
info@belgraviagallery.com
www.belgraviagallery.com

Opening Hours
Monday - Friday from 10am to 6pm
Saturday by appointment