VRINDA READ & SIBYLLA MARTIN

This exhibition is an accidental pairing of two painters who turn out to be serendipitously complementary: the one, Vrinda Read, with representational European landscapes in her delicate muted palette, and the other, Sibylla Martin, with abstract paintings made in Kenya in bolder but still harmonious colours.

VRINDA READ was born in Wales and is now based in Ipswich. In 1997 she graduated with a First Class Degree in Fine Art and English from Christchurch College, Canterbury. She is also a trained teacher of art.

She has lived in China and France and travelled through much of Europe, South East Asia and India. Distilling the essence of the landscapes of her travels is the stimulus for the work in her trademark gentle colours. The paintings in this show are based on the sketches and watercolours done over the last three years on her family trips to the Costa Brava, Sicily and France. "I am always drawn to looking through arches, up to and through doors and windows and along pathways. I am inspired by shapes within shapes, windows within buildings and mosaics of overlapping buildings." As well as the works on canvas and paper, Vrinda has made her first paintings on wood panels. "The grain of the wood adds a new texture which can be used as part of the composition and can unlock new shapes."

SIBYLLA MARTIN was born in London and studied at Camberwell and The Slade School, from where she gained a First Class Degree in 1991. She has lived in Kenya for 15 years, on the shores of Lake Naivasha in a rural slice of bush with six dogs, but visits North Essex to see her Slade School friend, painter Dina Southwell.

Her early influences were Russian geometric abstract art via her Russian grandfather, and Italian Early Renaissance painting. These very different influences have imbued her work with a formality and stillness. She now works almost exclusively abstractly, and either very large or very small. Colour, how it works, and what it can do, is the predominant theme of her work at present. The starting point can be a part of a wall, or a slice of a landscape, in fact anything that offers a trigger and possibilities.

VRINDA has shown mostly in East Anglia, including in mixed shows at North House Gallery in 2003, 2005 and 2012. In 2000 she gained a "Year of the Artist" commission from the Arts Council for her project "Waterfront", a residency at Ipswich Docks.

SIBYLLA has recently shown mainly in Nairobi, but earlier in several galleries in London including Rebecca Hossack in 2007. She had work accepted for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 2007 and 2008.