The exhibition is titled ‘Untold Vistas’ is a solo show by local artist Jude Hanly. Jude is not only lives and works in Walsall, but her work is found in international collections and sold widely in Europe This is a unique opportunity to see a collection of Jude’s paintings in an intimate setting locally. If you love landscape painting this exhibition is a must see. The exhibition runs from 29th March - 28th April 2024. More information is attached, and Jude will be on hand to talk about her art practice during the Private View.
Jude's previous career was as a set designer working in the theatre for companies like the RSC, Welsh National Opera, Paris Opera House, as well as Repertory Theatres she also ventured into TV and Film. When her family came along she took a career change and set up her own Interior Design Company, creating schemes for Bars and Restaurants, she even set up her own chain of Gastro Pubs. As the children flew the nest Jude went back to her love of theatre design, film work, and also mentored disadvantaged young people trying to get into the arts through apprenticeship schemes.
Jude was on a treadmill, until she had life changing surgery, in 2015. This was game changing, "it took me over 18 months to recover, I started to swim daily as walking was painful, and I was still caring for her elderly father". In 2017 Jude decided to focus on painting, the one thing she had always wanted to do. "I thought if I don’t do it now when will I follow my dream of being an artist". Jude still swims almost every day in a local pool, and wild swims in the sea, rivers and lakes, "being in the water is my happy place, it helped restore my life and joy for the world".
Jude lives and works in Walsall with her studio just around the corner from the New Art Gallery Walsall. Where she was exhibiting in a group show earlier this year. Jude’s paintings are exhibited internationally and her work is found in collections around the world.
Jude loves nothing more than a bracing walk in the countryside up a mountain, or on the beach, and when the weather is warmer a swim in the sea. "I love the smells and sounds of the waves crashing along the shoreline, the way the sun glints on the water, how the weather changes in an instant. All my senses seem to be more alive when I’m at the coast and I'm totally mesmerised by the shear force and power of the ocean".
Jude is inspired and fascinated by nature, recalling places experienced or imagined as the work forms, creating from a place of no time, no space. Using and creating marks like an impressed memory, trying to recapture the essence of that moment. Jude makes many of her brushes, pigments, and tools so her marks and colours are unique to her artwork and are usually found in the vicinity of her subject matter.
Process Her paintings are created through a performative process of applying pigments, oils, creating pools, creating marks with found objects, then tilting and manoeuvring the canvas. It’s a physical process painting I have to move to feel part of what I’m creating. “Water is such a powerful force in shaping the natural landscape” and by using the fluidity of the paint in her process, it resonates with the ways in which the landscape is formed and eroded. “Our minds and the earth are in a constant change of erosion, mental and physical rivers water away abstract banks, brain waves undermine cliffs of thought, ideas decompose into stones of unknowing….”
You can find more information on Jude's website, www.judehanly.art/about
In this exhibition 'Untold Vistas' the artwork mainly consists of Jude's smaller work, (due to the restrictions of the building), if you would like to see her large scale work then please contact Jude via her website www.judehanly.art to arrange a studio visit.
