Kentmere House - Forthcoming Exhibitions

In the last decade Tessa Newcomb has emerged as a rising star of the art world. Now a major contemporary artist with a national reputation, she is widely recognised for her unique style. Like all the best artists, she is a compulsive painter and absorbs ideas for her painting wherever she is, including her trademark features of subtle colour, ordinary everyday situations, and quiet humour.

Ann Petherick, owner of Kentmere House Gallery, has been showing Tessa’s work for 15 years and has watched it develop into the assured style she now has, but without losing any of the freshness and unpretentious quality which sets it apart.

“A new delivery of paintings by Tessa is always an exciting event at the gallery. Tessa’s work is a joy to show, and it still amazingly affordable, even now that she is so widely recognised.”

Mill on the Waveney	Moter & daughter on a Paris balcony	Rooks	Tobacco plant

This year, two events will further underline Tessa’s role as a major artist of the 21st century. In March her third solo show will take place in London, and this will coincide with the publication of the first book on Tessa and her work. Author Philip Vann writes:

"Tessa was born in Suffolk in 1955, daughter of the painter Mary Newcomb, Her art arises from piercingly clear, pristine perceptions of the everyday and natural worlds. The drawings she continually makes - such as on riotously weedy Suffolk allotments, observing curious, even bizarre happenings in manicured Parisian squares or alongside Venetian canals, and while ambling or cycling among the clear light and spacious landscapes of East Anglia - are a rich imaginative source for her paintings.

Tessa sees her art as inseparable from ordinary life. Each of her paintings seems to tell a secret story. Their eerily beautiful atmospheres and curiously juxtposed imagery recall the art of Christopher Wood (1901-1930). Among her sources of inspiration, she counts 'watching slow, atmospheric films', early 20th-century urban photography, 'going places and rail journeys' and reading poetry."

This 144-page hardback book is profusely illustrated in colour and black and white, The text is partly based on the author's conversations with Tessa Newcomb and is the first survey of this artist of singular vision, with a keen, popular following. It reveals how her subtly multi-layered paintings are illuminated by an interior radiance, an awareness of what she calls 'Spaces and Silences', and a rare, magical poignancy.

Copies will be available from the gallery at £29.95

The Arts Council's Own Art' scheme can be utilised to spread the cost of your purchase over 10 months with no interest, no deposit and no charges.