Opening: 24 May 2103

‘Beginnings’: an exhibition of large pastel drawings addressing the evolutionary process and smaller oil paintings revisiting the biblical myth of Eden by Barrie Ormsby. The exhibition also includes landscapes from west Durham and compositions after music and using the triangle.

For the past twenty years, Barrie Ormsby has been a member of Bear Park Artists Cooperative, sharing a studio attached to a community centre, formerly a Miners’ Welfare Hall, with Romey Chaffer and John Foker. The Cooperative has worked in schools, in hospitals and for trade unions, and offers a programme of workshops for adults and children. The artists’ creative practice is always placed at the heart of the Cooperative’s work.

Barrie Ormsby has made murals in diverse contexts, including a medical centre and a football stadium. More recently, he became interested in narrative again, after struggling to avoid it for many years. For this exhibition, ‘Beginnings’, four large pastel drawings (3.5mx1m) address the evolutionary process; smaller oil paintings revisit the biblical myth of Eden.

The exhibition also includes landscapes from west Durham, compositions after music and using the triangle — an ancient symbol for the earth — and works responding to events in the social landscape. For the last thirty years, Barrie Ormsby has worked in and from the same small patch of landscape in west Durham, recording the reclamation of two pit heaps by nature, working from the motif and in the studio. Many of the forms and colours experienced there have informed his visual language. The music-inspired pieces in the exhibition began as drawings made whilst listening to either live or recorded music, worked up into paintings later.