Rigby Graham: Recording far-flung places, encapsulating time, flinging oranges.

By Heather Beales

Figure 9. Rigby Graham, ‘Balloon Race’, colour woodcut on white wove paper, 44.5x53cm, 1990. Image courtesy of Goldmark Gallery

Rigby Graham was an artist who worked within the British landscape tradition and enjoyed provoking the offence of traditionalists with his unusual juxtapositions, use of bold colour and materials. He was extremely prolific and produced a great many books and artworks in various types of printmaking, painting, illustration and stained glass. The School of Art Museum and Galleries owns a large collection of his prints, and a few of his drawings and watercolours. In 1987 John Piper admired Graham for his “unusual and indeed enviable capacity to make romantic and dramatic images out of ‘simple’ scenes – sometimes almost totally deserted ones”, (Ayad). Graham was interested in places that had history and had deteriorated with time, and many of his images are of castles, old churches and ruined monuments – and also of a shipwreck.

Sydney Lee exhibition at the RA and Aberystwyth

Professor Robert Meyrick, Head of the School of Art and Keeper of the Museum, has for many years researched the work of the painter-printmaker Sydney Lee (1866-1944). The results are currently on show in From the Shadows: the prints of Sydney Lee RA at the Royal Academy until the 26th of May.