A new exhibition in Wells-next-the-sea will showcase the work of one artistic family.
Wells Maltings will host the show of artwork of local painter, David Head, with work by his father, Adrian, mother, Ann and godmother, Audrey Earl.
The work was created in their family home on Gong Lane in Burnham Overy, which is on the market after 90 years, and will be displayed between September 16 and 26.
Studio pictures and those from the walls of the house will be on sale. Included in the sale will be a ‘history section’ of pictures by three more artists who lived at Burnham Overy in the 1930s to 1960s; Andrew Butler, Gwen Salmond Smith, and Lily Maris.
David who owns the artwork has been a rector in two sets of Norfolk parishes and is now retired.
This exhibition, named Four Winds: Four Artists explores aspects of their lives and artwork, shaped by living where land and water meet the sky.
The home was brought for David’s grandmother and her two sons by the family after she was widowed young. The village was a place of happy holidays for her, and she already knew her neighbour, an architect named Andrew Butler, who designed the church Our Lady Star of the Sea in Wells.
The house was then on the edge of the village, with cornfields beyond it to the south. Nothing surrounded the home and the sea could be seen from every ground-floor room. His grandmother called the house Four Winds.
Adrian grew up there. In 1939 he contracted polio while a cadet at RNC Dartmouth, was in hospital for two years, and remained disabled. His brother was killed in the war, as were both the sons of Gwen Salmond Smith, who lived at the Ship House in Burnham Overy.
Ann, David’s mother, produced the majority of artworks in this exhibition.
She trained at Chelsea Art School, and continued regular courses through her life, well into her nineties, in London, Norfolk, and abroad.
While she was chairman of Norfolk Lavender, she also did much of the design and most of the illustrations on the Norfolk Lavender packaging.
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