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Sizes quoted are of artworks. Where enquiries of prices are made on the gallery, the work is subject to availability and the price to change.Reviewing the 2013 Royal Academy Summer Show for The Spectator magazine, author and critic Andrew Lambirth used binoculars to scan the ‘skied’ paintings hung in the Lecture Room above the spectators’ eyeline. He picked out a work by Delia Tournay-Godfrey: a small oil painting of Aldeburgh which, he felt, ‘was refreshingly empty’. For Delia, this was a satisfyingly precise response to her work from someone who knows about painting.
Born in Ipswich, Delia came to painting in the early 1990s as a young wife and mother with a strong attraction to art and a hunger to learn. Her enrolment on the new degree course in Art and Design at Suffolk College led to her working with Ken Back, an artist and teacher known for his uncompromising focus on a hard-won, personal approach to drawing and painting based on deep observation. In Ken, Delia found her mentor and continued tutorials with him for several years after her graduation in 1996. Although Ken sadly died in 2002, his presence remains with Delia ‘telling me to listen to my inner feelings…remain true to yourself. Avoid the easy solution, slick brushwork, repeating yourself.’
Since the early 2000s, Delia’s work has been shown in group as well as solo exhibitions in local, national and international settings. Looking and drawing are fundamental to Delia’s practice; her unique way of seeing through drawing is deeply felt yet always rigorously structured. Her numerous sketchbooks have long been the genesis of some of her larger paintings and are replete with closely observed pencil and watercolour sketches of people and places, references to artists and detailed written observations.
Empty and Full Spaces marks Delia’s third solo showing at Chappel Galleries, following Figures in the Landscape in 2008 and Strangers on a Shore in 2018. In this latest exhibition, Delia continues to find new ways of expressing shades of ambience through her painting. For instance, the brushwork in East Cliff (2019) has dark coils resembling parts of rough concentric circles that are completely believable as massive trees looming over the tiny figure. In contrast, Sea Time (2019), a studio work grown from a much smaller oil painted from life at Delia’s beach hut, depicts immense areas of sky and sea. These are flat, with slight variations of tone. The figure is miniscule, yet visitors to Delia’s studio were attracted to this painting with its big, blue, seemingly depthless spaces.
There are further variations in Delia’s rendition of place and space in the paintings from her travels in France and Bavaria such as House in the Hills I, House in the Hills II (2018) and Mountain Storm (2019). Although the paintings are carefully observed from life, they are also informed by Delia’s exhaustive sketchbook work which forms part of her response when painting.
The current exhibition also features paintings made during the pandemic lockdowns of 2020-21. Initially prevented from working directly from figure and landscape, Delia gained fresh insight from her sketchbooks in her studio. Eight evocative small paintings including Distant Sea, Sea Dreaming and Sea Air (2020), all with a theme of women standing near railed or fenced boundaries between themselves and the sea, came out of this process.
The ‘snow paintings’ such as Winter Walk and Winter Solitude (2022) are also studio works, not from sketchbooks or from life (although she has drawn and painted in freezing cold conditions) but from vivid imprints on Delia’s visual and tactile memories of frequent walks in heavy snow over Rushmere Heath, Ipswich in February 2021. She was intrigued by the feelings the snow brought to the space around her:
‘it became like the sea and sky, and the large empty spaces I had been using in my previous work. The snow was dense sometimes and moving, fluttering or heavy and blinding...the trees were a mass of tone almost disappearing, and the people were strong little beings struggling against it or just enjoying being in it.’
The ‘moon paintings’ are recent studio works, with more to come. Delia had a longstanding desire to paint the moon but was frustrated by lack of daylight conditions for working from life. She has tried taking photos of the moon on her mobile phone for reference but uses them only as an aide-mémoire, a quick glance to recharge her visual and spatial memory before starting to paint. Wolf Moon Rising (Jan 2022), for example:
‘was from the car window on a journey to Felixstowe: Craig (Delia’s husband) was driving and we were chatting, and I was gazing out of the window fascinated with the large pale moon that was rising in the dusky sky as we whizzed along. I decided there and then that I would paint it in my studio from memory the very next day. I looked for as long as possible taking mental notes of the colours and tones, and the proportions of the landscape in relation to the moon. I felt a sense of urgency about getting these memories and ideas down, and did a small painting the very next day, and then continued working on the larger one, Wolf Moon Rising from the small one, surprising myself at how exciting and alive it felt even though the subject was not in front of me, not even a sketch! A new project had begun and is ongoing.’
Indeed, to return to Andrew Lambirth’s brief but telling comment, the spaces depicted in Delia’s paintings may often appear ‘empty’ but they are fresh, alive with mood and atmosphere and above all, with paint.
Dr. Pat Hurrell, August 2022
Lecturer in Contextual Studies (Photography, Art, Graphic Design)
University of Suffolk
1997 - 2002 Mentor - Ken Back
1993 - 1996 BA (Hons) Art & Design, Suffolk College (UEA)
1987 - 1989 Certificate in Adult Education
2000 ‘04 Graham & Oldham Artists’ Gallery, Ipswich, Suffolk
2000 ‘01 ‘02 ’04 ‘22 Aldeburgh Gallery, Aldeburgh, Suffolk
2002 Pond Gallery, Snape, Suffolk
2006 ‘14 Snape Maltings Gallery, Snape, Suffolk
2007 ‘11 Buckenham Galleries, Southwold, Suffolk
2008 Figures in the Landscape - Chappel Galleries, Chappel, Essex
2009 ‘10 Assembly House, Norwich, Norfolk
2009 ‘10 ’14 ‘16 Cinema Gallery, Aldeburgh
2018 Strangers on a Shore - Chappel Galleries
2007 Play, Place & People - Strand Gallery, Aldeburgh
2009 Looking Out - Strand Gallery
2009 Three Painters - Halesworth Gallery, Halesworth, Suffolk
2020 From Life - Artspace, Woodbridge, Suffolk
2021 Spring Exhibition - Chappel Galleries
1994 - 1996 Annual Drawing Exhibition - Forefront Gallery, Suffolk College, Ipswich
1996 The Summer Show - John Russell Gallery, Ipswich
2001 Landscapes of East Anglia - The John Innes Centre, Norwich
2001 - 2002 Haste Gallery - Ipswich
2003 - 2005 Wingfield Arts - Wingfield, Suffolk
2003 - 2019 Snape Maltings Gallery
2005 The Artist’s Eye - Buckenham Galleries
2006 Here’s Looking at You - Town Hall Galleries, Ipswich
2006 ’08 ’13 ’15 ’17 ‘19 From the Model - Various Galleries, Suffolk
2006 ’08 ’10 ’11 ’14 ’15 ’17 ‘18 NEAC Annual Open Exhibition - Mall Galleries, London
2006 ’07 ’08 ’10 ’11 ’14 ’15 ’16 ’17 ’19 Discerning Eye - Mall Galleries, London
2008 - 2022 Ipswich Art Society Open Exhibition - Ipswich
2009 - 2017 Not the Royal Academy - Llewellyn Alexander Gallery, London
2009 ’10 ’18 ’19 ’20 ‘21 Mixed Exhibitions - Chappel Galleries, Essex
2010 Fairhurst Gallery, Norwich
2010 Art at the Park - Croxton, Norfolk
2010 Art & Sculpture - Glemham Hall, Little Glemham, Suffolk
2011 South Lookout as Muse - Caroline Wiseman Modern & Contemporary, London
2011 - 2020 D’Arcy Fine Art - Manningtree, Essex
2011 - 2016 Josephine Harpur - East Anglia
2011 - 2014 Brighton Art Fair - Brighton, East Sussex
2012 ’16 ’17 ‘20 Really Affordable Art - Belinda Taylor Art, London
2010 - 2022 Cork Brick Gallery, Bungay, Suffolk
2013 Summer Exhibition - MoncrieffBray Gallery, Petworth, West Sussex
2013 20/21 International Art Fair - RCA, London
2013 ‘16 RA Summer Exhibition - Royal Academy, London
2014 - 2022 MF Gallery, Ipswich
2014 - 2016 Cobbold & Judd Fine Art - East Anglia
2014 - 2015 Lynne Strover Gallery - Fen Ditton, Cambridgeshire
2014 - 2016 Chapel Place Gallery - Tunbridge Wells, Kent
2016 Lynn Painter Stainers Prize - Mall Galleries, London, & Guildford House, Surrey
2017 Contemporary Art Fairs, Reading & Windsor, Hertfordshire
2017 Contemporary Masters from Britain - The Cut, Halesworth, Suffolk
2017 - 2020 Buy Art/Buy Now Online Art Gallery, Mall Galleries, London
2017 - 2018 Contemporary Masters from Britain - Tour of four Art Museums, China
2019 - 2020 Summer & Winter Collectives - The Aldeburgh Gallery, Aldeburgh, Suffolk
2019 - 2021 Cotswold Contemporary - Cirencester, Gloucestershire
2019 ’20 ‘21 Mixed Shows - ArtDog, London
2018 - 2021 Mixed Shows - Artspace, Woodbridge
2020 Affordable Art Fair - ArtDog London, Battersea, London
2020 ArtEast - Framsden Barn, Framsden, Suffolk
2021 - 2022 Singulart - Online Art Gallery
2021 ‘22 Royal Society of British Artists Open Exhibition - Mall Galleries, London
1990 - 2000 Part-time lecturer in adult education - Suffolk College
1996 - 2004 Illustration work - Suffolk County & Suffolk Coastal District Councils
2003 ’05 Artist in Residence - Ipswich Transport Museum & Ancient House, Ipswich
2003 - 2010 Suffolk Open Studios - Member & committee member
2004 - 2022 Commissioned paintings
2005 - 2022 Organises regular life drawing for artists
2006 - 2022 Bespoke framing service for galleries and artists
2007 - 2008 Drawing Workshops - St Albans High School, Ipswich
2011 - 2015 Gallery Assistant - Strand Gallery, Aldeburgh
2012 ‘18 Selector for Ipswich Art Society Annual Open Exhibitions
2012 - 2022 Ipswich Art Society - Member
2015 - 2022 Picture hanging service for public & private collections
2017 ‘18 Candidate for membership of the New English Art Club
UCS East Contemporary Art
Priseman Seabrook 21st Century British
Painting
Yantai Art Museum, China
Ipswich & Colchester Museums
Lincoln Seligman Purchase Prize - ING
Discerning Eye 2015