Sketches of Spain, recent paintings runs from 23 November—3 December.

Open Monday – Saturday, 9am—5pm.

Artist Milly Stevens makes paintings, mixed-media collages and assemblages. She has been working from outdoor environments for over forty years and this, her latest body of work, responds to the colour and heat of the Southern Spanish mountains. Fascinated by patinas and colours found whilst travelling, previous works have taken Venice, Amsterdam and Cape Cornwall as their subjects.

The exhibition includes a series of previously unseen, new works made in response to the Riogordo in the Southern Spanish mountains. The works include six large oil paintings on canvas around one meter square, a series of 10 smaller works on canvass and several smaller scale collage and mixed media works on paper (framed).

Engaged in responding to the nuances of colour and texture observed at her chosen location, Milly Stevens approaches her subject with a preference for immediacy, avoiding any pre-determined outcomes. Her language encompasses a wide range of daubed, scrubbed and layered marks, with drawn lines, collaged elements, found fragments and thin oil glazes.

Her compositions often play with partially constructed geometric divisions and discontinuous pictorial space, at times shifting ambiguously and at others tightly contained. This series of works mark a departure towards less contained, open landscapes. Intense colour schemes define the workʼs spatial elements and set up tensions between them. Milly often refers to ʻsolar plexus coloursʼ, those that evoke an intense sensory response in the viewer.