PRESS RELEASE for April/May GALLERIES website

Uplifting and colourful, Yew Tree Gallery’s opening show of the season ‘UPRISING’ (14^th April to 31^st May) is many faceted ~ including paintings, sculpture, textiles, ceramics, glass and jewellery in its two exhibition rooms.

Working in watercolour and acrylics, CAROLINE BAILEY RSW captures the charged atmosphere of the meeting of land and sea, both in Cornwall and the Western Isles. MARIANNE HELLWIG JOHN’s abstract acrylics show the stirrings of growth below and above ground, whilst birds in flight characterise several of KIRSTEN GLASBROOK’s tapestries, finely woven from dyed nettle yarn.

Alongside these exhuberant wall-hung works are JILL FANSHAWE KATO’s stoneware pots, decorated in her inimitable style with birds, insects and flowers ~ and PRUE COOPER’s earthenware platters, sliptrailed with axioms celebrating life and love. In the middle of this large gallery RACHEL JOHN’s unusual knitted rugs spill out rainbow colours from a large basket and in the jewellery cabinet DIANE JORDAN’s necklaces incorporate warm-hued stones with hand carved silver beads.

The adjoining glasshouse collections bring a contrast in mood. Here CATHERINE HYDE’s watercolours are light in touch and reveal her move “from moonlight into the sun”, as she puts it. VERONIQUE GIARRUSSO’s gentle narrative paintings are reflective, with an icon-like quality. Sculptor DAVID JOHN shows a series of small shrines, carved and painted in soft metallic tones ~ and these lead the eye into CHARLOTTE BULLEY’s ‘skewed and fissured’ glass pieces. GINA COWEN’s sea-glass necklaces and rings add to the effect of shiny translucence in this room.