Paintings and Drawings on Show

An exhibition of paintings and drawings by Mervyn Peake and Maeve Gilmore, at the Astor Theatre, Deal, shows for the first time a range of fifteen works from different periods of their life together. The show, which will remain up until Christmas 2011 has several paintings produced on Sark during their stay in the mid to late 1940's.

Earlier water colours, produced when Mervyn Peake lived on the island during the mid 1930's, evoke the idyll of the inter-war years, with his view of the Sark church for instance set against a pastoral scene of hay fields.

A pierrot-like figure in oil dominates however with its strong colour, but other works display the eclecticism for which the artist is known. Influenced by the weather-beaten trees and hedgerows of the wind-blown lanes, Maeve Gilmore's own tableaux brings to life the vulnerability of the isolated island surrounded by the often raging seas for which the area is known.