‘All your Demons will Wither Away’: paintings and drawings by Marguerite Horner
Clare Hall is pleased to present an exhibition by Marguerite Horner, which will be open daily for public viewing between 10am to 4pm.
Clare Hall is proud to present All your Demons will Wither Away, a remarkable exhibition by Marguerite Horner. It further upholds this college’s interest in the diversity to be found in contemporary art and its ability to provoke thought and feeling. The dominant images in this show are concerned with light on water. While involved with this subject, the artist crosses from one medium into another, examining what can be done with oil painting, then photography, before turning her attention to watercolour for similar effects. The desired result in all media is a form of grisaille, a near monochrome language of art, centuries old, that brings unity, tenderness and precision to any composition. But in Marguerite Horner’s art, her use of grisaille, instead of controlling nature, releases striking effects of light. Sea and land, instead of being dimmed by the consistent use of Payne’s Grey, are made to brim with new life.
This subject became a dominant interest after she drove from Oakland to Los Angeles, taking the Pacific Coast Highway. How could it not become obsessive when, looking westwards, all she could see from this snaking road built some 300 feet above sea level, was an unmeasurable expanse of sand, sea and sky? After spending two weeks with her daughter in Beachwood Canyon, and travelling to and fro to the Californian coast town Del Mar by trains, she returned to London and, in the course of 2022-23, produced a burst of work, some of which was first presented in an exhibition titled ‘Numinous’, shown in the Crypt, at St Marylebone Parish Church, London. Since then, she has attracted considerable success, receiving the British Women Art Award in the year 2018, and exhibiting not only in the England but also in China and the USA. In 2023 her monochromes became the subject of a monograph in the Contemporary Artist Series, written by Matthew Holman and published by the Hurtwood Press. One of her admirers is the well-known novelist, William Boyd, who has kindly written a piece for her Clare Hall exhibition, which runs from 16 January to 26 February 2026. We are enormously grateful for his analysis of the subtlety and beauty to be found in her art.
by Professor Frances Spalding, Chair of the Clare Hall Art Committee
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