The Head and The Heart is a meditation on the ways good practice marries aspects of both the head and the heart, and the intellect and the intuitive. Good practice embraces process, experimentation and the mistakes therein, whilst (usually) allowing the ideas behind things to be seen as clearly as possible. Visually direct, acknowledging change and chance and all with great dollops of control - that's the sort of heady mix I believe is visible in this little group show.

Le Lievre and Martin pour, Morison bleeds, Stephenson draws quickly, and Macleod dips and dips again. Here is the mandate of process, of delicate means pushing towards the profound. Gorman, Heaphy, Hartley-Skudder, Swanson and Straka are more controlled. Theirs is a studious patience, a restrained simmering beauty perhaps. Expressions of the figure (portraiture even), sensuality and the grotesque are explored, and still life is pushed into territory both off-putting and wonderfully abstract. There is variety here, thoughtful fun, and hopefully lots of it!
JS

Press release courtesy Jonathan Smart Gallery.