Dockside Gallery presents ‘Full Colour’ – a solo exhibition by Amble-based painter, Luke McTaggart.
‘Over the past year or so, I’ve become really interested in painters like Bonnard and Derain,’ Luke explains. ‘Artists who used solid colours to create a kind of emotional intensity in their work.’ Luke is excited to be showing in Tweedmouth at the Dockside Gallery for the first time.
‘Although I’ve exhibited in galleries such as the Royal Scottish Academy and BALTIC Gateshead, these have only ever been as part of group shows. My solo shows have always either been in Amble or Alnwick.
‘It’s great to be going somewhat further afield and reaching new audiences!’
‘The show will be made up of paintings focusing on the landscape Luke navigates daily in his corner of the North East and from sketching trips to Berwick and the River Tweed,’ explains Dockside Gallery owner, Mary Drummond. ‘The paintings are all underpinned by a new attitude to colour that the artist links with the work of early 20th-century French ‘Fauve’ and Nabis painters.’
As well as a full-time artist, Luke, 23, is also passionate about promoting his fellow-creatives. ‘I run ‘Crit Nights’ in Amble with collaborator Jim Donnelly. These are essentially like open mic nights for artists. People just turn up with a piece of work to share with the group and we just engage in a free-flowing conversation about the things that come up. We’ve had up to 60 people a night coming on the last Tuesday at a place called the Dovecote Centre in Amble.’
Luke says these events really help artists in a rural area to get to know one and other and to give them a platform for their work to interested people. And non-artists go along too.
‘I think the way galleries can act as hubs, and gallerists like Mary as connectors, is one of the big things that makes them so important. We are in one of the UK’s largest and most sparsely populated counties meaning meeting other artists is much more difficult than it would be in a city.’
Full Colour opens on Saturday 5th October and will run until the 19th October. Dockside is open from 10am-5:30pm, Tuesday-Saturday.
If members of the public would like to attend the launch event for the exhibition they are encouraged to join the gallery’s exclusive mailing list via the website: https://www.docksidegallery.co.uk/
Luke will be at the gallery 2-4pm. So come along and meet the artist.