4 - 9 September 2007  

Harbour House has invited Dick Bruff to show a major retrospective exhibition spanning his 40 years of painting.

Dick has been involved with Harbour House since its earliest days. Jo Pelly, Director of the newly formed Harbour House, discovered that Dick had been running a Life Drawing Class in Yealmpton and invited him to come to Kingsbridge to set up the Friday studio, which has remained a popular fixture ever since. He has also arranged a number of weekend tutorial sessions with different artists.

The retrospective will include examples of drawing, line and wash, pastels and printmaking, as well as paintings in watercolour and acrylics.

Although not formally trained in the Arts, Dick had always taken a serious interest in drawing and painting. Nowadays, of course, we're spoiled for choice, with art books and instruction manuals, and art classes and clubs. But when Dick was in his 30s the world of art was still something of a mystery, so when he read in the local press of a watercolour class in Plymouth with Claude Kitto, he jumped at the chance - and one of those early paintings will be included in the exhibition.

He studied under Kitto, and then Michael Hill, for a number of years, and was inadvertently responsible for sowing the seeds of what is now the very active Plymouth Watercolour Society, by suggesting to Michael Hill that the class might try some additional outdoor painting sessions.

Dick began a serious life drawing practice around twenty years ago, and the first model he painted still models for the Harbour House class today.

Ever keen to extend and deepen his work, Dick has also experimented with printmaking, with Mike Glanville at Salcombe Art Club, where he has been a member for over ten years. He is also well known in Kingsbridge as a member of KASHAC, the Kingsbridge and South Hams Art Club.

Dick has also invited some long-time friends and fellow painters from Plymouth to share the gallery with him: Michael Hill, Jean May Parsons, Loraine Saveall and Val Morsman.

Michael Hill studied graphic art and design at Plymouth College of Art, and has worked as a freelance illustrator, and tutor of painting in watercolour and acrylics. He is a member of the Plymouth Society of Artists, President of the Plymouth Watercolour Society, and has exhibited at the RI and RA Summer Exhibitions.

"In my work it is important that I create a sense of place, be it imagined or otherwise. I like structure, but hopefully as the painting progresses forms will begin to melt away into shapes and colour used for their own sake. Quite often a small section of a painting, however insignificant, may provide the inspiration for another work."

Jean May Parsons is a full-time artist living in the South Hams, with several solo exhibitions to her name in the galleries of the South West. The rich colours and decorative designs of Venetian architecture have proved an enduring influence on her acrylic and watercolour paintings, whatever their subject.

Loraine Saveall trained in Technical Drawing, and later added watercolour painting to her repertoire, experimenting with perspective and design. She is a member of the Plymouth Watercolour Society, and has shown work in a number of galleries across Devon and Cornwall.

Preceded by two generations of painters in her family, Val Morsman grew up accepting paint as a primary form of expression. Her current work uses watercolour, ink and collage, and experiments with colour, pattern and repeating shapes. Inspiration includes local marine subjects and architecture of all kinds.

Harbour House 2007 ©