Private View Thursday 19th March, 2015: 6.30 – 8.30pm
Exhibition dates 20th March – 18th April
Piers Feetham Gallery
475 Fulham Road, London SW6 1HL
020 7381 3031
piersfeethamgallery@hotmail.com
www.piersfeethamgallery.com
Piers Feetham Gallery normal open hours Tuesday to Friday 10-6; Saturday 10-1
Note Piers Feetham Gallery is closed for Easter holiday 3 – 6 April.

DAYTIME PARKING: Pay Display in local streets or underground in the Chelsea Football Ground,
directly opposite the gallery.
EVENING PARKING: All local parking is ‘Residents Only’ between 6.30 and 8pm and a towaway policy is enforced. Please use the underground carpark. TUBE: Fulham Broadway. BUSES: 14, 414 & 211

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Alders 2015 45x30 Watercolour £1,080	Barn, Bacon’s Lane 2013 56x100 Watercolour £4,500	Beach Hut and Steps 2014 35x70 Watercolour £1,960	Boardwalk and Boats, Tollesbury 2013 75x75 Watercolour £4,500	Cathedral Spire, Salisbury 2014 75x50 Watercolour £3,000
Cement Works, Greenwich 2014 105x105 Watercolour SOLD	Chappel Viaduct 2012 150x100 Watercolour £12,000	Chappel Village under Snow 2012 46x75 Watercolour £2,750	Early Spring in Chalkney Woods 2014 50x75 Watercolour SOLD	West Cliff, Whitby 2 2014 35x52.5 Watercolour £1,735
East Cliff, Whitby 2 2012 68.5x46 Watercolour SOLD	Groynes 2014 30x45 Watercolour SOLD	Harbour Entrance, Whitby 2014 40x60 Watercolour £1,925	Hawthorn 2014 75x50 Watercolour £3,000	Hogweed and Willow Herb 2013 160x40 Watercolour SOLD
Holme Valley, Yorkshire 2011 100x150 Watercolour £12,000	Humpty Back Bridge from the Humpty Back Bridge 2014 40x60 Watercolour £1,925	Jubilee Night 2012 34x55 Watercolour £1,500	Lightship, Tollesbury 2013 65x45 Watercolour SOLD	Link Span, Harwich Pier 2013 70x75 Watercolour SOLD
Mary Jane, Norfolk 2013 40x60 Watercolour £1,925	Millennium Pond in Snow 2012 50x75 Watercolour £3,000	Norton Hall Farm 2012 34x34 Watercolour Not available	Old Hall Farm, Wakes Colne 2013 42.5x100 Watercolour £3,400	Path, Dunwich 2015 45x30 Watercolour SOLD
River Colne in Spate 2015 72x52 Watercolour SOLD	Road to Walberswick 2014 39x30 Watercolour SOLD	Rock Pool 2015 45x30 Watercolour SOLD	Rocks and Groynes 2014 35x52.5 Watercolour £1,450	Salisbury Cathedral from the Water Meadows 2014 90x60 Watercolour SOLD
Sea Defences 2014 40x100 Watercolour £3,200	St Peter and St Paul, Lavenham 2013 75x50 Watercolour £3,000	Traffic Cones 2015 30x30 Watercolour £725	Trees in Winter 2015 30x30 Watercolour £725	Viaduct with Moon Shadow 2013 55.5x71 Watercolour SOLD
Viaduct with Poppies 2012/14 55x76 Watercolour £3,350	Viaduct with Tank Traps 2014 138x138 Watercolour £15,000 1st prize winner Lynn Painter-Stainers Competition, London 2015	View from Clacton Pier 2014 60x90 Watercolour £4,320	View from Orford Castle 2014 40x100 Watercolour £3,200	Vineyard with Hill, Ceressou, France 2012 38x76 Watercolour £2,300
	Wheelie Bin, Walton 2013 80x100 Watercolour £6,400	Windbrake, Hedgerow, Autumn 2012 37x60 Watercolour SOLD	Woodpile, Hoe Wood 2013 85x71 Watercolour £4,825

Introduction

Much of Mirecki’s potency of image derives from the juxtaposition of man-made architecture and natural growth: a typical subject might be the River Colne in Spate. The picture’s foreground is thronged with foliage expertly painted (though thankfully not with quite the mad hallucinatory extremism of the Pre-Raphaelites), the central episode features light reflected off moving water, while trees take us into the background and the Chappel Viaduct. The accuracy is not snapshot photographic, it is a skilled recreation of a specific place at a particular time of day and season. The painting is an interpretation of a familiar landscape, an investigation into its rhythms and structures, the underlying forms which give it presence and meaning. Mirecki departs from the literal truth when it is necessary for the painting to do so, carefully heightening or moderating it. The artist’s principal work lies in making decisions about what to include and what to disregard, where to place an emphasis and where to put a counter-balance. Mirecki’s artistic transformation of his subject is so subtle and sophisticated that sometimes it goes almost unnoticed.

The coast has become another favoured subject, usually East Anglian, such as the beguilingly austere View from Clacton Pier, with its skeletal forms of wind turbines fading into the cloud-bank on the horizon. Occasionally there is no vestige of man’s impact on the environment. It is eye-opening to see a straightforward study of sea, sky and land, as put forward with luminous yet understated brilliance in West Cliff, Whitby II. Other landscapes include a vineyard in the south of France, and a couple of views of Salisbury. Mirecki strays in Constable’s footsteps over the water-meadows, places the cathedral’s spire at the top of his painting, but brings the focus in low, to the reed-fringed drainage system. This oddly serene image wakens echoes of John Nash’s painting The Moat, Grange Farm, Kimble (1922) in the Tate. Mirecki’s other Salisbury subject is a witty urban scene: the elegant spire caught this time between two red-brick council houses, and put in its place by satellite dish and double yellow lines.

As Clive James wrote recently: ‘The only way to hide the tensions of a set form is to perfect it.’ He was referring to poetry, but the same can be said of painting: only when the conflicting tensions of a landscape are resolved, can a harmonious painting result. In these beautiful new paintings, Władysław Mirecki shows us how a vision of landscape may be perfected.

Andrew Lambirth