The Old Chapel, Chalford
The Old Chapel is the home and studio of artists John and Fiona Owen. Each year, for the first two weeks of June, the two painters exhibit their paintings in their large studio - it is an annual Midsummer Celebration - a visual journal of their year recording their travels and their daily walks. Their hillside garden is spread over an acre of terraced cliff, with a gothic tower, pond house and box hedged potager. It is also open at the same time, under the National Garden Scheme.
The Old Chapel has been featured in many National and International magazines:
Gardens Illustrated: 'Folk memory and spiritual imagery often endow vantage points with an enigmatic eminence that is as intangible as inexplicable. How appropriate, that two talented artists Fiona and John Owen, whose paintings capture the rural scene, should choose to live in a converted chapel, perched high on a Gloucestershire hillside: and that they should also decide to create a magical and allegorical garden in such a spiritually charged setting'. Margaret Buntrock
Country Living: 'The glorious garden that has emerged from rubble is now a place of pilgrimage for horticulturalists and painters alike. You have to see their paintings to appreciate the skill and vision that make John's so strongly evocative of mood and light, Fiona's so perfectly observed, executed with all the richness and precision of illuminated manuscripts'. Miranda Innes
Telegraph Magazine: 'For the valley has an association with craftsmen and painters going back a century. Once a year, in June, easels and palettes are tidied away and the walls are hung with small and miniature canvases they both paint, intricate studies, featuring bright, jewel-like colours, long shadows and reflections'. Stephen Lacey
Also featured in:
Featured in 'Dream Gardens' by Andrew Lawson and Tania Compton, 2007 · The English Garden magazine, 2007 · Saturday Times · Telegraph Magazine · Gardens Illustrated · London Evening Standard · US Country living · UK Country Living · Homes & Gardens, etc., etc.
The Old Chapel Wall Painting
In the studio, the west wall of the old Wesleyan Chapel has been painted to celebrate the opening of the Millennium exhibition. It was created over two years, and depicts friends and neighbours coming to celebrate the Midsummer fire festival of St. John, and the Summer Solstice. The figures descend to the Chapel, flanking each side of the garden, playing musical instruments and bearing colourful streamers bedecked in gold. the wall painting was inspired by Benozzo Gozolli's fresco cycle at the Medici Ricardi chapel in Florence.
Fiona Owen
Fiona paints in oil on panel and gilds her work with 24ct. English gold leaf in the tradition of the Mediaeval manuscripts. Inspiration for her extraordinarily intricate, lyrical paintings is drawn from her native landscape - the flora and fauna and the changing seasons, and her Celtic inheritance.
She endeavours to capture the elusive Wild Magic that is the genius loci - the spirit unique to each place. Her paintings are a celebration of, and a homage to, nature. She works in the tradition of the Mystic Visionaries, from William Blake, Samuel Palmer, Richard Jeffries, through to Cedric Morris, Kathleen Raine and Robin Tanner, and believes this pattern in painting and writing to be a thread through time, existing metaphysically as a united body of consciousness.
F. John Owen
Light and atmosphere infuse John's paintings. The great challenge is to create a sense of light, space and volume from paint, transforming an ordinary, everyday image into an extraordinary moment of vision. John paints in both oils and watercolours, making detailed sketches from life, wherever his travels take him, then working up his paintings in the studio.
His work is informed by past worshippers of light from Vermeer, Turner and Monet, to Clausen and Hammershoi.
Often the paintings are worked into, the surface scratched or even sanded to create an airy, atmospheric quality.
XIXth SUMMER CELBRATION
at the Old Chapel, Marle Hill, Chalford. Exhibition and Garden, open daily 10am-5pm, Sunday 7th June to Sunday 21st June
In aid of the National Garden Scheme Charities.
This year we are also open with the Stroud Valley Open Studios
(Site09 - www.sitefestival.org.uk).
Fiona Owen
Three books have formed the underlying inspiration for this exhibition: 'The Wisdom of Birds', 'Corvus' and most significantly, 'Chysalis', which records the life of Maria Sibylla Merian, a seventeenth century artist, explorer and natural historian, whose exquisite nature studies were a quest for further knowledge and a deep understanding of her nature subjects - attempting to capture the essence and individuality of each living thing, proving that the more one looks and understands, the more reverence one develops for the infinite diversity of Nature.
F. John Owen: 'Landscapes of Light'
This exhibition explores light and atmosphere, contrasting the bright dazzle of sunlight on water with the opalescent translucence of moonlit mist. The paintings were inspired by trips to Venice and the Lake District, two very different places and yet linked by the same fascination for a painter, that of conveying in two dimensions the transient movement of light on water: one moment it's transparent, or translucent and the next it is reflective. It is a constant challenge to create 'airiness' or a spirit of place with base pigment within the confines of a frame.
Previous Exhibitions
Medici Society Gallery, London, UK ( from 1981 to 1991)
Sagert Gallery, Berlin, GER
Nailsworth Gallery, Berlin, GER
Nevill Gallery, Bath, UK
Lane Gallery, Key West, USA
Diva Gallery, Palm Beach, Florida, USA
Diva Gallery, Long Island, NY, USA
Southshore Art Center, Boston, USA
John has also exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition for ten years from 1984.
Contact
For enquiries about Paintings and Limited Edition Prints:
Telephone:
+44 1453 886587 (international)
(01453) 886587 (within the UK)
Email: johnandfionaowen@hotmail.com
The Old Chapel, Marle Hill, Chalford, Stroud, Gloucestershire GL6 8PN, United Kingdom
Visitors by arrangement or during exhibition dates only.
How to get here
Marle Hill is in Chalford, on the A419 between Stroud and Cirencester.
Casa Della Colline Verdi
Casa delle Colline Verdi ('the House of the Green Hills'), set amongst the panoramic foothills of the Appenines, has become our retreat, and provides an endless source of fresh inspiration.
For those seeking a place of perfect peace, a retreat from the modern world, we are renting our Italian home. There is no television, pool or telephone. It is a place to paint, walk, read and contemplate in an exquisite and inspiring landscape.
For further details, visit our website.
All text and images copyright © John and Fiona Owen 2009