Ann Reeve, A Retrospective at Castlefield Gallery New Art Spaces: Chester

Exhibition dates: 2 November – 29 November 2024
Private view: Friday 1 November, 4-6pm
Opening times: Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, 10am – 4pm
Venue: CASC in Castlefield Gallery New Art Spaces: Chester, Unit 14, Grosvenor Shopping Centre CH1 1EA

Ann Reeve attended Lincoln Art School in the 1950s and subsequently joined drawing classes in London, York  and Chester. Most recently she has been attending Chester Life Drawing sessions at the University of Chester’s Creative Campus Kingsway. In life classes she develops the idea of drawing the studio  environment as well as the model. These drawings will resonate with any art student, or indeed ex-art student who has attended a life drawing class, and are redolent of a tradition which still holds currency  today.  

In her sketches she records the changing scene; elephants and cows make a diversion from people to say nothing of nightmares and traffic jams. Ann’s drawings and paintings often draw attention to the ordinary, and are the result of a close looking. That ordinary is sometimes disturbed however by the extraordinary and the viewer is made acutely aware of the potential for those two states to co-exist.

In 2000 Ann exhibited a painting in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and in 2013 held the exhibition  ‘Life Room’ with CASC at the University of Chester. Between 2018 and 2019 Ann was Artist in Residence  at the Holy Ascension Church, Upton-by-Chester. Based in Chester she continues to practice and this exhibition indicates the breadth of her studio activity and her deep knowledge and experience of the act of looking and the associated disciplines of painting and drawing.