The three artists who feature in this group exhibition share one strong drive, one of distilling the essence of the landscape locations that they choose to study. Each habitually travel to their favourite locations, and, in their own individual ways, divine the main characteristics of a particular terrain - breathing in vistas, mostly well away from other people, opening their senses and concentrating on the primary elements that confront them. In the case of Jill Jeffrey, the bones of the Welsh, Scottish and local landscape. In Marc Yeats' case (in this instance) the muscular North with subjects from Berwickshire, as well the Peak District and further south, from Devon and Sussex. Nick Heap, at present, concentrates on more local territory, from near the Malvern Hills across the north-western side of the Cotswolds. Most of his subjects (other than his still life and interior subjects) feature sunlight filtering through woodland and most of his paintings can be described as half representational and half abstracted.
Nick and Marc's works in this exhibition are mostly in oil. Nick's compositions are of quite intimate environments, quiet and contemplative, and feature a delightful palette of carefully applied blocks of colour. Marc's paintings are characterised by contrasting weather conditions, sometimes sunlight with scudding clouds throwing shadows across broad swathes of farmland; these are then contrasted by observations of powerful weather whipping up coastal tracts of sea. Marc also features smaller compositions of woodland in this exhibition, often depicting typical, turbulent British weather.
Jill's exhibits are in mixed media, comprising watercolour, ink and pastel, or in watercolour. Jill is a member of The Pastel Society. Her works possess great clarity, and are extremely committed studies of open landscape, hills and mountains, woodland, individual windswept trees and derelict farm buildings. She prioritises the main elements of any composition by abstracting to a degree, deploying the well-known purity of pastel to great advantage, in combination with other media.
John Davies
June 2025
