‘Paintings’ – Linda Weir

Castlefield gallery’s auction show, A Friend In Need, raised close to £10,000 – a fully qualified success in these times of recession – and ensures the gallery’s survival into the next financial year. Grateful thanks go to the donors and buyers (and Anthony H Wilson, who proved to be a capable auctioneer) for rallying around.

Its successor is Linda Weir: Paintings, which highlights the work of one of Manchester’s best-loved painters. The initial impact of these paintings is derived from a sumptuous use of colour and their manifest richness of detail. Decorative and formal elements are reconciled with great skill. Linda Weir is a painter with an unerring understanding of the capabilities and qualities of the oil medium. Thick accretions juxtapose with thin layers of paint; extremes of density and translucency in beautifully judged balance. Her watercolours are as assured and, though less dramatic, perhaps gain in delicacy.

Lately, and this development seems to have coincided with Linda’s move to rural Lincolnshire, her scenes are more often situated outdoors. They have become more expansive and have a lighter, airier touch. Wide-open spaces are captured in sweeping horizontal canvases, use is made of painterly equivalents to the rhythms of nature – movements of sea, clouds and windblown trees.

Castlefield Gallery is pleased to promote this fine Manchester artist, although note that Linda Weir, with her Cornish sea-scapes and Lincolnshire landscapes, is as far removed form drab urbanity as heaven is from hell.