Two Painters - Hazel Rank-Broadley and John Rodgers

The Setting gallery and Plot café, Tuesday - Friday 8.30am-4pm, Saturday 10am - 4pm, Sunday 10am - 3pm

Hazel Rank- Broadley

‘Painting in watercolour was an exciting new departure for me, beginning in 2019. I painted in oils during my studies at Camberwell School of Art and Goldsmiths’ College, where I did a degree in Fine Art, but I found the freshness and vibrancy of watercolour altogether different.

There is a peculiar spontaneity in watercolour, as pigment reacts with water moving into a variety of specialised papers, either rough or smooth. It is fascinating to be able to be able to work precisely, with a fine brush on botanical painting, or to allow paint to find its own direction when a mop brush is loaded with colour and then applied to wet paper, to evoke sky, sea and earth. Endless possibilities arise, and the journey is a process where time disappears, a meditation.

I am inspired by my garden, and I love the transparency of irises in particular. Composing a landscape I’m interested in evoking air, space, and movement, capturing or creating a moment in time. I have learned how leaving expanses of white, unpainted paper electrifies the scene, as do diagonal lines.

The air, sea, sand and fields of Mallorca have been particularly inspiring in 2024. I hope that you will find something that resonates with your own joyful moments, as you study the results of my days spent painting.’

John Rodgers

‘My relationship with Greece began when I received a British Council-Greek Ministry scholarship upon leaving the Slade in London, in 1979. It culminated in an exhibition at the British Council on Plateau Kolonaki, Athens, in 1981, the first of a number of exhibitions I made in Greece, over the years.

I have included one or two early work “remainders” I had made and previously shown in Greece, the odd borrowed painting in a selection made up entirely of oil paintings but over time, I have often worked in watercolour as well, the climate lends itself to both mediums.

Both England and Greece have been key to my work as a representational painter. I began with English landscape from a very early age, working directly from life, the influence of Robin Tanner, a late friend of my fathers, in Oxfordshire at that time. The subtleties of landscape never cease to engage me. When I arrived in Greece (I first went by train) it was the timeless quality of the old Greece, I first witnessed then, albeit briefly, and the intense quality of the light, once experienced, never forgotten, that have remained informative. The aspect of looking, association, memory, reflection and some very special friendships, people and places, I have made along the way, poly kali kardia (very good hearted), as the Greeks would say!’