29 March – 23 April 2016
If cooking shows have you drooling, you’re likely to enjoy a large helping of the latest images from painter Stephen Allwood. In this show the celebrated artist and foodie lets his audience eat cake, without the calories.
Stephen ignores the sugar ban to put sumptuously glazed and melting desserts back into the heart of the home. Generous canvases capture the glamour of food - the wink of crystal, the icy rime of frost on a berry – all in bold, romantic swathes of paint.
Dessert is the result of months spent traipsing between studio and the kitchen of the Martinborough cooking school that Stephen helps run with his partner, the chef and author Jo Crab. The pair divides their time between New Zealand and a home in rural France.
Stephen admits: “I like the idea of being able to see the layers trapped behind glass. I love looking through that translucence, the idea that it is enclosed and somehow a little removed from us. It makes it a precious thing".
