William Gear RA is a special artist for us; not least because we have one of his paintings in our own collection. We bought his 1953 abstract,  Black and Green Verticals, from the Fosse Gallery in February 2015. It is my Painting of the Month for November as we were reminded of Gear’s work on a recent visit to the David Simon Contemporary. 

His exhibition Between the Lines of Modernism focussed on the works of William Gear and introduced a number of artists associated with this period of British Art History. Gear was a Scottish painter, most notable for his abstract compositions. His paintings featured strong black verticals and horizontals, which he claimed evoked memories of his time  as a coal miner in Fife. In the exhibition were works by the great St Ives artists Patrick Heron and Sir Terry Frost as well as pop artist, Eduardo Paolozzi.

Most surprising to us, though, was the inclusion of a painting by the French artist, whose work we really enjoy, Fernand Lèger. We visited The Lèger Foundation at Biot on the Côte d’Azure some years ago. It turns out that Lèger was a tutor of Gear’s when he was studying in Paris. 

At the exhibition we met with the artist’s son, David Gear, and enjoyed listening to him talk of his father’s time and growing up with some of his associates. It must certainly have been a very exciting and illuminating childhood with the likes of Terry Frost and Patrick Heron as regular visitors. David positively gleamed recounting some of the anecdotes, the details of which are probably best left out of this post

The Fosse Gallery in Stow on the Wold and The David Simon Contemporary are two of the best small galleries in the south west and both are musts for lovers of British Modern Art.

Images, except Green and Black Verticals, by kind permission of David Simon Contemporary, Castle Cary.