People Places Faces was my first solo exhibition since leaving Marling School after twenty years service as an art teacher there. Comprising some sixty plus oil paintings it represented many enjoyable painting hours and it certainly added some colour to the gallery walls. As a body of work it grew and evolved over a period of time, with the earliest pictures being about three years old and the latest one still drying on the wall! Not having a car, I was faced with the logistical problem of how to transport the work from studio to gallery but I needn't have worried as Simon Fitzgerald very kindly loaded up his van. He also gave up two of his valuable Sundays to help me hang the work and take it down at the and I am very grateful for his generous support.

The human form, seascapes and portraits are my main areas of interest and each of these were well represented in the show but I have become increasingly fascinated by the enjoyable challenge of portraiture and this is what made up the bulk of the work. With Stroud Life Drawing now so well established, I have hundreds of pencil drawings of people and faces and it seemed logical to use them as a starting point for further work in oils. Thus, all of the paintings in the exhibition, apart from one, were done from drawings rather than from life or from photographs. To make this connection between the drawings and the paintings explicit, I hung some of the framed pencil studies next to the corresponding painting and many viewers commented on how interesting it was to see the two together. The Cornish seascapes were also derived from drawings and some of these pencil studies were also on display.

Most of the photographs in this gallery were taken on the evening of the Private View and what an evening it turned out to be! In the photographs, shorts, T-shirts and sun dresses are much in evidence but there are no real clues to suggest that southern Britain was in the grip of a mini-heatwave with temperatures in excess of 30 degrees Celsius. At home, my fridge was completely filled with Budding Pale Ale, courtesy of Stroud Brewery (many thanks Greg), and the gallery fridge was crammed with wine but would anyone turn up on such a stifling evening? In fact, between ninety and a hundred people did turn out to support me and see the work, making it a memorable evening. Thank you to everyone for being there and apologies that I was spread so thinly that conversations were snatched  here and there whilst some people arrived and left with hardly an acknowledgement! As the crowd thinned and the sun went down, how special it was to sit outside the gallery and enjoy a more relaxed drink in what can only be described as continental type weather. I hope that those people who were unable to attend the exhibition will be able to get a flavour of it through viewing this web-page.

Both at the Private View and throughout the week whilst attending the gallery, I was delighted with the positivity of everyone's feedback and their kind words of encouragement. I was also honoured that a good number of people liked my paintings sufficiently to part with their hard earned cash to have one of them hanging on their wall at home. Unless undertaken as commissions, portraits are always going to be less commercial than landscapes or seascapes but I can honestly say that everyone of them has been undertaken for me, for the sheer pleasure and challenge of doing them, rather than for any financial gain. Working first from life and then from the drawing, each painting is twice removed from the reality of the sitter, necessitating a good deal of invention and interpretation whilst hopefully still retaining something of a likeness. With no photographic reference, all colour is remembered or devised for artistic effect and I apologise to any sitter whose eye colour is wrong!

My debt to various artists, including Uglow, Klimt, Jonathan Yeo and others, is, to a greater or lesser extent, apparent in the work but my greatest inspiration has come from my uncle, the artist Ken Symonds, who sadly died in 2010. For forty years he ran a life class at his studio and he always regarded landscape and figure as two sides to the same coin. It was always a great pleasure and privilege to 'camp' in his large studio/home (formerly St. Andrew's Methodist Chapel) in Newlyn surrounded by piles of pastels and watercolours, soaking up the creative atmosphere and being inspired to do more of my own work. Helen and I love to walk the Cornish coast path and, for me, it will always be like stomping Ken's home ground and painting the coastal scenery will always seem a bit like painting his subjects. Thank you Ken and sorry you could not be at the show.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           KEITH SYMONDS