Colours of nature and life in abstract forms

HENLEY Art and Crafts Guild members are known for their diverse selection of works. Photographer Wendy Reed and stained-glass artist Bryan Smith are two such creatives participating in the guild’s 72nd annual autumn exhibition, which is in the council chambers at Henley town hall this year.

Wendy, from Stoke Row, likes to do recces for many of her pieces. “One of the pictures I’m bringing is called Woodland Track and it’s A2 size, I had to go on quite a few different mornings to get autumn colours at their peak coinciding with a misty morning.

“I identified a lovely lane that runs from Christmas Common down to Pishill and the top of it, it’s quite a sunken lane so all the trees sort of overhang and it was beautiful, with all the different layers of colours, receding into the mist.

“In fact another A2-sized one that I’m bringing, called Colours of Autumn, is probably the opposite really, one of those rare ones where you just happen to be somewhere and the light is just perfect.

“It was just a chance place that I found, quite close to home. All the bracken had taken on a total myriad of rich autumn tones and everything was sort of glowing, it was a lovely soft light. Because of the quality of the light and the soft editing I’ve done on it, it’s one of my particularly painterly ones.

“The third photograph that I’m bringing is A3 sized and it’s called Green and Gold. This was in autumn where a lot of the beech leaves retained their green colours but some of the leaves had totally fully changed to their full orange, amber tones. There was a group of trees where there was a pleasing rhythm of the shapes that the boughs were making and so the composition works really well.”

Wendy is experimenting with new ideas. “I went to a Hiroshige exhibition with Japanese woodblock prints at the British Museum and I love the more natural ones. They have perfectly balanced compositions and there’s quite often flowers, trees and other things of the natural world, and I’d quite like to create some fairly minimalist images that have that kind of Japanese feel.

“I’m also experimenting with intentional camera movement, where you actually move the camera while you’re pressing the shutter, so it becomes quite abstract.”

Maidenhead artist Bryan Smith joined the guild about a year ago.

He says: “I’m submitting three stained-glass pieces for the exhibition. You do handle quite a lot of sharp and very hot things but if you’re careful it’s fine. The way it works is that you have pieces of glass and you sort of make them hold together by putting a strip of lead in between. I buy glass in sheets of red or blue or whichever colour or sometimes they’re streaky, all sorts of different colours and patterns, in a shop in Reading, just by Cemetery Junction.

“I also paint pictures on the glass using special paint and fire that in the kiln so that it’s permanent, so that’s how I get the colours and then sort of assemble it in a picture.

“I’ve done a few commissions and following on from the last Henley exhibition, I had one up there and someone bought one and then someone else came up and said, ‘Oh, I was just about to buy that one, can you make me another one just the same?’

“If people want to buy it that’s great, because it funds the exercise. People can say, ‘Oh, that’s very nice’, but if they’re going to part with their money for it they must actually mean that it’s nice so that’s a sort of validation.

“This time it’s going to be an abstract thing, another one is a townscape with a red balloon in it and the third one is a woman’s face with all sorts of colours around the edge. It’s inspired by a Paul Klee painting called The Red Balloon.

“I’ve got four prints going in, two birds, one ladybird and one about a unicorn.”

l Henley Art and Crafts Guild’s 72nd annual autumn exhibition will be held in the council chambers at Henley town hall, from Friday, October 17 to Tuesday, October 28. There will be an opening evening on the Friday. For more information, visit www.henleyacg.org