Saturday 13th August- Sunday 21st August
For sixty-five years the celebrated English artist Constance Stubbs ARCA has been observing, drawing, etching and painting people. From working shepherds in Greece in the 1950s to a homeless person asleep on a bench in the 1990s, to teenagers skateboarding last year, her unique portraits reveal as much about the human condition as the individual subjects that they depict.
Stubbs, now 83, lives and works in Suffolk and George Agnew, the director of Blackthorpe Barn, Bury St Edmunds is delighted to announce that the gallery has secured a major retrospective of her work from 13th-21st August. Over 120 mixed media works, along with paintings etchings and drawings trace the career of this prolific and brilliant artist.
Stubbs studied at the Cheltenham College of Art and in 1942 gained an exhibition scholarship to the Royal College of Art where she was taught by Professor Robin Darwin, Ruskin Spear, John Minton, Carol Weight and Rodrigo Moyniham. After graduating, Stubbs went to stay in Greece where she was selected for a solo show at the Anglo Hellenic League in 1950. Professor Angelos Prokopiou wrote of her work: “The principal subject of Miss Stubb’s paintings is man. Not the gay and satisfied city type but the stricken countryman. Ponderous, grave, silent, resembling a rock or hoary tree and, with his dramatic aspect, appearing as one who re-enacts some thrilling role of death and misery in a classical tragedy.”
In the early 1980s Stubbs developed an individual artistic technique that she has been deploying ever since. First, she selects subjects for portraits, either from life observations or through the media. She then tears out images of these subjects from her sketch-books or newspapers. The tearing out of the initial images is integral to the work as the resultant shapes often make the works develop in an organic way. The paper shapes are then glued to paper and worked on with paint, pastel or charcoal until she is satisfied with the result.
Rolling Stones guitarist Bill Wyman and Take That singer Gary Barlow are among the many famous collectors of Stubbs work. And, as well as an impressive exhibition history with shows in the Royal Academy and the Hayward Gallery, she has worked as Senior Lecturer at Coloma Teacher Training College, Kent where she was given a sabbatical to study printmaking at Croydon College of Art for a year. Through the college, Stubbs won a commission to design and paint the Rearados for the chapel at St Mary’s University College Twickenham, the painting over 40ft high of Jesus and the Apostles, was shown to the Pope Benedict XV1 during his visit to the UK in 2010.
Constance Stubbs was told by her late brother that he had traced the family ancestry to the great British artist George Stubbs (1724-1806). Whether or not his findings were accurate, her work is outstanding, both in terms of technical skill and draughts manship, and her ability to present humanity in its most naked form.
Blackthorpe Barn, Rougham, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk IP30 9LZ
www.blackthorpebarn.com
www.constancestubbs.com
