Art - Janet O’Riordan

Inexplicably I hadn’t been to the Garden Room Café on Station Street before I ventured in to see an exhibition by the artist Janet O’Riordan, which is on display on the café’s walls throughout July. The café is a welcome antidote to Caffe Nero, where I normally go for breakfast. It has the sort of scruffy-chic interior that somehow defines the town, and a lovely secluded garden out back. While I was being made a coffee I took a look round the art on the walls. About halfway round I was brought my drink in a little glass cup with a metal handle. “What do you think,” said the girl, who was wearing an apron. I pointed to the watercolours on the wall nearest the door. “I like these,” I said, truthfully, because I did. They were washy landscapes, with reassuring names like ‘The Downs towards Kingston’, ‘Grove of Sheep, Southease’ and ‘Boats, Piddinghoe’. Then I pointed to the wall opposite the door. “But I’m not sure about these.” One was a stylised wolf howling in front of an oversized moon called ‘Wolf Moon’; another a collage of paper petals on top of a painting of pink roses encircled by glitter paint, called ‘Rose Moon’.

I had a mixed reaction to the last wall, too, of paintings that looked like they were representations of Ms O’Riordan’s dreams. ‘Bathing my Spine in Healing Blue Light’ did have some wonderfully textured flowers, but on the whole other people’s dreams are never as interesting as your own, and mine never include wide blue staircases leading into poppy fields. AL