ONE of this area’s most respected and popular artists, painter Charlie Baird returns to The Art Stable, at Gold Hill Farm, Child Okeford, from 17th June to 14th July, with a new collection of work, much of it inspired by visits to some of the furthest points of the British Isles – the Outer Hebrides, Cornwall and Pembrokeshire.

Taken from distilled memories of place and time, these paintings aim to capture certain atmospheres and moods of a landscape, revealed with both figurative and more abstracted images. He uses different media to convey the atmosphere of a landscape or a situation.

Born in Nairn, Scotland in 1955, Charlie Baird studied at the Instituto Allende, San Miguel, Mexico, Wimbledon School of Art, London and at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris.

Since his first solo exhibition at the Crane Kalman Gallery in 1977, he has had solo exhibitions in London, Europe and America. This is his sixth solo exhibition at The Art Stable.

He often starts painting with a reduced palette, enjoying “the use of colour near-opposites and the gradations of tone and colour that can occur in between”, using this to echo the oppositions and confluences in the observed subject. He paints with a great range of colour – a particularly English, sometimes muted palette – but with a warmth that shows a true understanding of light, for example, when he captures the glow of late summer.

Pictured: Pembroke Sea, and Croft, both mixed media.