SLADERS Yard, the contemporary art gallery and cafe in West Bay, continues its 20th anniversary celebrations with a major exhibition of paintings, drawings and etchings by David Inshaw, one of the great contemporary painters of landscape, an artist who has been showing regularly at the gallery throughout those years.

The solo show, At the Still Point of the Turning World, paintings, drawings and etchings, runs from 12th September to 14th November.

Anna Powell, who co-owns Sladers Yard with her furniture designer-maker husband Petter Southall, recalls David first visiting the gallery when they opened in 2006: “His first solo show here was in 2007 and we have worked with him ever since. In addition to group exhibitions, solo shows followed in 2013, 2020, 2021 and 2022/23, 2024 and now 2026. His work is always available through Sladers Yard including works to commission.”

David Inshaw is an artist of the English landscape and, through that, the English psyche, says Anna. “In a lifetime of extraordinary paintings that are both intensely personal and universal in their potency, he has traced the hearts and minds of a generation. His dreams, memories and conscience lay bare the edgy sense of the unexpected and otherworldly which have always been part of the way he sees the world.”

He grew up in Biggin Hill, close to Samuel Palmer’s Shoreham and studied at Beckenham School of Art and the Royal Academy Schools, with a six month scholarship to study in Paris, before he started to teach painting and printmaking at the West of England College of Art in Bristol.

In 1975, with Peter Blake and five others, he formed the Brotherhood of Ruralists, who devoted themselves to painting subjects drawn from nature and English mythology and literature. Inshaw came to prominence in that period and has exhibited widely and painted his mysterious captivating paintings ever since. One of his most famous paintings, The Badminton Game, was acquired by the Tate Gallery in 1980.

His work has been featured on television, including Arena in 1984 and Hidden Paintings in 2011, and in many public, private and corporate collections worldwide including the Arts Council Collection, Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, the British Council, the British Museum, the Victoria Art Gallery, Bath, and the Royal West of England Academy, Bristol. He lives in Devizes.

Norwegian ceramic artist Lise Herud Braten, whose work is being shown alongside the Inshaw paintings, is a rising star. Her first major solo exhibition in a UK commercial gallery, at Sladers Yard in 2024, was a great success.

Lise trained as a bespoke women’s tailor in Norway before coming to the UK in 1996 to complete a BA (Hons) in Fashion Design at Ravensbourne College. She worked for several of London’s top couture designers before eventually creating her own design label.

She started learning to throw at Putney Art School under John Dawson in 2013. She fell in love with the material and processes immediately and continued with weekly classes for several years. Masterclasses with Shozo Michikawa, John Higgins and Hazel Richards helped develop her practice. She set up her current studio with fellow maker Amanda-Sue Rope in the beginning of 2020.

She became a Selected Member of the Craft Potters Association and of Contemporary Applied Arts in 2022. She has shown at various makers events, including the Oxford Ceramics Fair, Celebrating Ceramics, Waterperry Gardens, Ceramic Art London, Ruthin Craft Centre and Cambridge Contemporary Art.

Lise works with many different techniques, from delicately thin thrown vessels to roughly textured slabs of coarse clay. Many of the pieces start off on the potter’s wheel, before being manipulated, altered and carved to soften their shape and appearance away from the perfect circular form.

Born in Oslo, her memories of growing up in Norway’s rugged landscape inform both shapes and mark-making, imbuing the pieces with a strong sense of place. The Sladers Yard exhibition will include sculptural works that will be shown for the first time.

Pictured: David Inshaw, Wiltshire Monument; and Brean Down, River Parrett, both oil on canvas.
Lise Herud Braten, Moon Vase group.