Solar Gallery’s 2023 seasonal exhibition brought painting, print, ceramics, textiles, jewellery, metalwork and photography together in Ilkley.
The title used the changing season only as a starting point, allowing artists to interpret it through distinct materials and practices.
Representational painting beside contemporary craft
Alfonsas Paulauskas joined the gallery with disciplined representational paintings made mainly in oil.
The wider exhibition included cards and sketchbooks alongside larger finished works, giving visitors access to several stages and scales of artistic production.
The mixed-media selection reflected the gallery’s role as a platform for both fine art and craft rather than imposing a strict division between them.
Paint tubes becoming studio portraits
A related collaboration with the Ilkley fashion store Jigsaw presented Jackie Waring’s series Studio Companions.
Waring painted the tubes of colour surrounding her during long periods of solitary work.
She was interested in the way people attach emotional value and personality to ordinary objects.
Her process involved applying paint, scraping it away, beginning again and repeatedly changing direction.
After studying art in education and teaching students across a wide age range, Waring had retired to concentrate on her own practice.
The Jigsaw presentation extended Solar Gallery beyond its normal premises and introduced painting within an everyday retail environment.
Together, the seasonal exhibition and Studio Companions showed artistic attention moving between landscape, material craft and the familiar objects of the studio itself.