Stormy Weather - Fran Dibble

This November a cloud has gathered at Zimmerman Art Gallery, with a collection of small bronze drops in the front gallery space.

Fran Dibble notes “the celebration of water has been a part of my artistic practice for decades now. I am constantly amazed by how this ordinary part of nature has such power – as a life-giving force; its ability to make up enormous seas, lakes and rivers; carving out valleys; its symbolic significance and the emotive reactions it induces – its preciousness.”

“For this reason my small rain drop models (their size much reduced from the monumental drop installed outside the gallery) are often gilded, emphasising their existence as small valuable keepsakes of this simple common phenomena. But for all this sentimentality the message is bitter-sweet: the drops also stand as warnings signs for the future, a reminder of the environmental issues of our age.”

Some of the drops are left as simple elegant shapes; others are decorated with words or imagery.

On the walls behind the drop sculptures are two new large oil paintings on board: 'Winter – rounded by a sleep', and 'Spring – the world wakes'.

“At the end of last year I set myself a task for 2022. I would paint four paintings of a garden scene, in each different season in a year. This was a great project for when sitting put; contemplating the changes in the world around me, encouraging a sense of wonder and discovery of life."

“Summer was shown at Zimmerman Art Gallery in March this year. Then I began on the next seasons. But, of course, this was bound not to go to plan as I enjoy too much the experimentation of altering things. Autumn was started, but then put to one side, and the next two seasons became horizontal rather than vertical. I changed around the featured plants, and Winter became a night scene, while Spring is a fresh morning.”

“The works are painted with an interest in the expressive movement of paint, like a garden tapestry, in a shallow perspective, rather than painting landscape with its traditional sense of vista and space.”

Exhibition runs until Sunday 27 November 2022