Artwave - Sussex Watercolour Society at the Thebes Gallery

I cold-called David Hopkins to find out more about the Sussex Watercolour Society’s exhibition in the Thebes Gallery. He seemed excited by the call. “I joined back in 1977, and the society had already been founded then,” he says. “We’re a group of professional artists who have exhibited in most of the major galleries in Sussex. We go through the whole gamut of painting styles, from pure abstraction to closely-observed realism.” The exhibition is part of the Artwave 2006 festival. “As I wrote in the brochure it will range from the loose and lively to the poetic and subtle.” Artists involved will include Sheila Marlborough, whose semi abstract landscapes you might have seen in the Chalk Gallery: Artwave have chosen a detail of one of her works, ‘Sirocco’, for the cover of their brochureand we've used it as our front cover this week; the romantic realist Nick Bremer, the retrospective landscape artist Alison Milner-Gulland, Hopkins himself, who does pop-arty pieces ‘which collide the abstract and the real’; Penny Hopkins, Nick Orsborn, Bill Blackshaw, Nick Bremer an Peter Waller.

“It will be a colourful show which we hope will make people think about the place of water-based works in the early part of the 21st century,” he says. And: “it will be a nice mix of traditional and forward-looking work.” The only restrictions to Society member’s entries is that their colours must be water-based: but this includes acrylics. “We want exciting works,” concludes Hopkins, being called into lunch by his wife. “If it seems right and looks right, by golly it is right.” DL