The Northern Lights Gallery in St John’s Street are from this Friday are exhibiting Alan Stones’ new lithographic prints and charcoal drawings. The exhibition runs for a month until 18th - October. Alan is well a very well known artist both in Cumbria and across the north west, based between Appleby and Penrith, he is the recipient of a number of accolades and awards over the years including the Northern Lights Gallery Award at the 2019 Westmorland Landscape Prize giving at Rheged.
Alan is also exhibiting two of his works at Scarborough Museum and Art Gallery in the New Light Art Prize, one of which, "Eyire" will be available to view in this new exhibition at the NLG.Alan has continued to experiment over the years with his craft, in 1984 Alan won an award from the Gulbenkian Foundation to experiment in printmaking though his more minimal lithographs came emerged some 12 years later 1996. As Alan testifies, "After several hours struggling to print a flat green colour which was to represent the grasses beneath a hillside I realised that, actually, I wasn’t particularly interested in either the colour or the make-up of the ground. What was exciting me was the line of the hillside and also two gnarled hawthorn trees, independent of each other, but both clinging to the line of the fell.”
Commenting on his success, Alan continues, “for me, over time, these trees and also the birds of the Cumbrian fells began to feel like metaphors for human endeavour.
Eventually the prints were to become arenas in which I could depict people directly. To my surprise metaphorical possibilities remained. For example, a drawing of a fell walker might be seen as a figure on a journey through life but also his/her rucksack could read as the burden they carry on that journey.”
Exhibition Work:
