Arundel artist Andy Waite offers a pre-Christmas exhibition

Celestine is at 54 Tarrant Street, Arundel, BN18 9DN on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, December 8, 9 and 10 and December 15, 16 and 17, 11am-4pm daily, all welcome (Friday, December 8, late-night opening to tie in with Arundel at Christmas town event, 11am-8pm).

Andy said: “After the summer open house exhibition as part of Arundel Gallery Trail, I always take some time out to reflect and to replenish the energy needed to start thinking about a new body of work.

“This last exhibition was my most successful to date and I am hugely grateful to all those who came and showed their appreciation both verbally and by making purchases. The volume of visitors we saw this year must have numbered several thousand and it was great to meet so many new people while welcoming back familiar faces.

“I’ve held a Christmas exhibition here at home for a number of years now and it’s inevitably a much quieter affair without the numbers that Arundel Festival and the Trail attracts. That said, there will be time to take things slowly and chat to friends, art lovers and all who would like to come and enjoy the environment of an exhibition that is part gallery and part our home, and I very much feel that is what has captivated people over 34 years of putting on shows here. We love making things look harmonious both for ourselves and all who visit, and it’s a great way for people to experience art in a home setting.

“So the new paintings are nearing completion and these will be on show in my main studio with selected earlier work in the second gallery.

“The title for the exhibition is Celestine which reflects the idea of looking upwards in wonder at the cosmos. Painting, like the movement of the spheres, involves a certain alchemy; the mixing of raw elements to make something not perhaps always of gold, but of value to the soul.

"The paintings still have their origins in landscape but abstraction, expressionism and imagination are increasingly to the fore. Fireside chat, refreshments and gentle music composed by the angels and their earthly friends will all be on hand. Feel free to bring a friend or two and as ever, if you'd like to visit at different times, please get in touch ([email protected]).”

Andy’s contemporary land and seascapes are essentially expressionistic in form and energy. They are a celebration of the English sky and weather in all their elemental power and their abstracted quality offers an ongoing dialogue that slowly unfolds.

Andy has been a practising artist for over 30 years and is widely collected both in this country and abroad.

He is represented by several galleries across the UK and holds three open house exhibitions a year at his home and studio in Arundel.