Cornish artist Alice Mumford presents a significant body of new work at The Great Atlantic Falmouth Gallery from August 26th. The exhibition includes a mixture of still life and landscape oil paintings, and a number drawings.

Alice Mumford studied at the Camberwell School of Art and is regarded by some as representing the contemporary link between that prestigious academy and the values of the St Ives School. Her work is much sort after and recent exhibitions in London have sold-out. Most recently, an Alice Mumford painting has been acquired for the permanent collection of the Edinburgh Festival while others take pride of place in many private collections throughout the land.

“The true artist must reveal the spiritual dimension that lies at the heart of ordinary and lowly objects. Alice Mumford is such an artist, following in the still life tradition defined by Jean-Baptiste Chardin and developed by Giorgio Mirandi. She sees clearly in the paintings of Cézanne what she defines as a process of weaving, with the interlacing energies of warp and weft across the entire surface forming a unified picture plane. This interlacing creates the basic abstraction to be found in all modernist painting.
 
“Her objects have at one and the same time a prosaic and a dramatic nature and symbolise the presence of human beings and the mystery of their daily lives. She instills an English flavour into the still life tradition and, in her profound understanding and joyful handling of oil paint, can be likened to Winfred Nicholson and the school of St Ives.”  Prof. Richard Demarco, OBE.

In her own words, Alice says: “I am endlessly drawn to depicting enclosed spaces, perhaps with a glimpse of something beyond. It is satisfying trying to paint the empty spaces in a cup or a box, the spaces between and around things, and the illusion of space. With many of my still lifes, it takes hours to arrange the objects into something which strikes a chord.

“I enjoy painting a wide range of light, from dusk to sunshine through a window. In dim light there are less tonal extremes,.......in bright light, it is important to balance the stronger lights and the darker darks.”

Alice lives in West Cornwall and in addition to making her own work is a valued tutor at the esteemed St Ives School of Painting where her courses are always eagerly awaited and inevitably oversubscribed.