Jean-Claude Charbonel & John Welson, Surrealism: The Celtic Eye

16 April - 2 July 2011

The Surrealists Salvador Dali and Rene Magritte created wonderful, exciting and entertaining worlds in their paintings. Jean-Claude Charbonel and John Welson have both exhibited around the world with these Surrealists for over thirty years and present a joint exhibition of their own personal and striking images. Their pictures represent vistas infused with bright colours and shapes which both artists have absorbed from Surrealism and their native landscapes.

The two artists come from Brittany and Wales, but met in 1978 at The Camden Arts Centre, London at the opening of an International Surrealist exhibition to which they were both contributing their work. They have been close friends since then and have exhibited together in subsequent exhibitions.

Jean-Claude Charbonel lives and produces paintings and ‘art boxes’ in a studio in Brittany, which overflows with found objects and driftwood. Behind the studio trees and a stream with splashing ducks gives way to a landscape of standing stones and circles. Charbonel absorbs the history and myths of his locale and creates his own inhabitants and inner landscapes constructed from the found objects and chance encounters with the discarded manifestations of contemporary society. Abounding with pleasure and benevolence these beings become custodians of the rocks and cliffs; guardians of the night they tread from the shadows of a Celtic Myth to ponder upon moon-drenched seas.

John Welson comes from the wild and desolate county of Radnorshire in Wales, from many generations of farmers who worked the land. His paintings are a reflection of the country, its ranges of hills and valleys, the myths and history that lie below the heather covered hills. The light and appearance of the hills with their softened summits and valley walls gives the illusion of large sleeping beasts.

Both artists have an empathy with the landscape they live in and that acts as a platform for the creation of their own ‘landscape’, encouraging the observer to become aware of a ‘latent reality’. A landscape that lies just below the surface and inspires the onlooker to look afresh at that which is around them.

Gallery Talk by John Welson, Wednesday 22 June 1:15 p.m.


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