A new exhibition by Llangollen-based painter Edward Bell,
who designed album covers for stars such as David Bowie and Elton John, opens
at the town’s Dory Gallery later this month.
Edward Bell was born
in 1950 and he studied at the Royal College of Art.
During the 1970s he
was a freelance photographer and illustrator for Vogue, The Times and Penguin
Books.
In the 1980s he was a
portrait painter and album cover designer for David Bowie, Elton John, Hazel
O’Connor and Kim Wilde and others.
During the 1990s he
spent 10 years in Southern Ireland where he became a landscape painter and ceased
producing commercial art.
In the 2000s he
became an inner landscape painter, which means he doesn’t usually paint real
places but the impression or idealisation of landscapes.
It's more of an
abstract interpretation than realist rendering. In other words, it represents an
artist’s own inner landscape.
Bell also lived in
Paris and spent long periods in India, Florence and Venice. And for over a
decade he has lived and worked in Llangollen, Wales.
His previous exhibitions
have been in London and Shropshire.
The exhibition at The
Dory Gallery in Regent Street, which runs from May 25 until August 20 and takes
over from Jac Williams’s Honest Agriculture exhibition, features his new paintings are
produced with oil paint on canvas or board. They explore ‘lies inspired by the
photographic eye’.
He explained: “The images are chosen and stolen from
Pandora’s Reticule, plucked, juxtaposed and coaxed to sing.”
Opening times for the exhibition are 10am - 4pm on Saturday
and Sunday or by appointment.
The Dory Gallery, ,
which occupies the former National School for the Poor and was later the
doctors’ surgery, officially opened in June 2021 and aims to be a creative and
cultural space showcasing the best in contemporary art.
The gallery is run by Suzanne Mathieson and artist Tony
Mallon.
