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The 2024 collection of recent paintings by Zanna Wilson from her regular breaks away from the Watermill Gallery as curator alongside the largest ever number of Christian Moore paintings to be seen in one setting.
21st June – 29th September 2024
Zanna Wilson and Christian Moore have enjoyed collaborating together in group exhibitions since 2022 and this summer they’ve decided to exhibit their work in a duo show taking over the entire WG space. Zanna’s busy painterly depictions of the Scottish coastlines, moorland and loch next to Christian’s timeless, still, exquisitely crafted and tentatively painted pieces will make a frisson between effervescent energy and a harnessed sense of quiet in the gallery. Where Zanna uses paint and colour in an immediate gestural way, Christian has developed his own unique and original painting process of using cold cast bronze and resin on a textured surface of pigments and minerals on hessian. The show will run all summer long and regular new pieces will be added throughout.
Summer Solstice Party
Zanna is hosting a Summer Solstice party on Mid Summer’s Eve 21st June: 6 – 9pm offering Pimms, Pickles & Pisco Sours and it’s a chance to meet Christian Moore and talk about his process. The party is open for all and the official opening of the show and please RSVP to hello@zannawilson.com if you’d like to attend.
The Gallery is then open 7 days a week 10am – 5.30pm, Sundays 11am – 5pm | All works are for sale
New pieces will be added continuously throughout the summer months | Video call is a great way to see the show if you can’t attend in person
Zanna Wilson – Watermill Gallery curator and artist since May 2021 – has gathered a full range of new work from her frequent trips to the Argyll Coastline, the Inner Isles, Torridon, The Cairngorms, The South Upland Way and round her home in Perthshire.
Click images to enlarge
Christian Moore complements Zanna’s work in this exhibition, with his considered restricted palette. Both artists share a passion for harnessing light, being amidst nature and with many of Christian’s whimsical subject matters alongside Zanna’s playful use of paint there’s more in common between their work than first meets the eye.
This exhibition will be an opportunity to see the largest ever pieces that Christian has created to date, in both scale and the sense that it will be his first time to showcase such a big body of work in one show. Christian, since 2021 has garnered a swift rise in acclaim (prior to this Christian was a fashion illustrator for 15 years) and exhibited in New York, London, Brussels, Edinburgh, Hampshire and the Cotswolds but his work has an intimacy that seems fitting to be holding his first big show close to his Dunkeld home in The Watermill, Aberfeldy, particularly as many of his subjects are inspired by the majestic trees, domesticity and Highland scenes of his local surroundings. He’s an artist with big ambitions and his very distinctive immediately recognizable style has made him a highly collectible artist in a very short space of time, each piece carries weight and measure; even the title of each artwork further adds to the poetic nature of his work. It’s going to be an exciting show to curate and it’s a pleasure to collaborate with such a rising star.
“Christian spent many years developing his unique method of sculpting cold cast bronze directly onto the surface of his pieces. The ‘cold cast’ is made in his studio using a fine bronze metal powder and a resin. Once cured the metal is aged to suit the composition. He deliberately cracks the backgrounds of his work which are a complete counterbalance to the usually crisp white textured foreground.”
Zanna would like to thank David Rhodes at Camserney Framing Studio for meticulously framing her work for this show. Christian Moore’s framing is separate to Zanna’s (get in toch to see examples) but each piece has a very considered hand-crafted frame, with a period limed moulding, a bold black frame or a limed moulding, each with either a white or bronze slip – the works embodies his overall sense of style and celebrates beauty and imperfection, hovering between richness and paired back simplicity.
Webpage banner image: Beltane Machair Sunshine by Zanna Wilson | acrylic on board, 76cm x 96cm, £3,200