Dreams of the everyday: Paintings by Winifred Nicholson & Andrew Cranston

This compelling exhibition arrives in the south, having opened at The Pier in Orkney in June. It brings together the paintings of Winifred Nicholson (1893–1981) and Andrew Cranston (b. 1969), curated by the designer and collector Jonathan Anderson, in collaboration with Andrew Cranston and the gallerist Richard Ingleby.

 

The display explores the connections and contrasts in paintings by Nicholson and Cranston, many of which share a delight in ordinary, often domestic, realities – drawing on daily-life, memory and imagination, and incorporating figures, interiors and glimpses of nature. Both artists’ practices are at once rooted in the real world, while going beyond conventionality and the commonplace to evoke a sense of non-physical, sometimes mystical, and occasionally visionary, realities.

 

The two painters, though distanced by time and place, are connected by their commitment to a kind of painting that values intimacy over showmanship. The earliest and most recent works in the exhibition are separated by a century – and whilst Nicholson often travelled from her base at Bankshead in Cumbria to paint in Cornwall, Paris, Greece, and on the west coast of Scotland – Cranston, originally from Hawick, has resolutely remained living and working in Glasgow. Despite such disparity in circumstances, and their distinctly different voices, their works sit well in each other’s company, and in presenting their paintings together, the exhibition seeks to reveal something new about both.

 

Image credit: © Trustees of Winifred Nicholson, Courtesy Bristol Museums