Published in the Dereham & Fakenham Times, November 17th 2011
A tribute to atmospheric Walsingham
BRITAIN's landscapes have always and effortlessly inspired adulation - Wordsworth's hymns to the Lakes, Ruskin's love of Durham - and it is no surprise that Norfolk excites just as much veneration. Ramsay Gibb, moved by his experiences en route to Walsingham, is the latest artist to express what our county means to him.
Ramsay, from Clitheroe, Lancashire, made a trip to Lindisfarne, the tidal island off the North-East coast of England, in 2008. There, he immediately recognised the significance of the nation's pilgrimage routes, the fact that many remain active, and how they could feed his passion for art. So it was that Ramsay then made his way to Norfolk, with his extraordinary images displayed at London's Francis Kyle Gallery (October 26th-November 24th). The exhibition, A First Avowed Intent: On Pilgrim Roads from Iona to St David's, features both landscapes and seascapes, taking in everywhere and everything from Queensferry, Scotland, to exquisite sunsets in Walsingham and Suffolk. The spiritual as well as aesthetic power of these locations is everywhere manifest in his paintings, and Ramsay's perspectives on Walsingham attest to the rugged beauty of its natural scene, not purely its historical meaning for centuries of devout visitors.
As Ramsay acknowledges, though, Walsingham's past religious legacy is second only to that of Canterbury's, and the exhibition's display in the City's Maddox Street space can only offer Walsingham the national as well as local attention it so richly deserves. Walsingham's renown as a place of pilgrimage is something upon which Ramsay draws heavily in his work, but he also uses walking as a broader metaphor for spiritual uplift. Recalling the words of nineteenth-century Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, "...I walk myself into my best thoughts...", Ramsay holds those sentiments to really encapsulate the effect that places like Walsingham have always had: "That's very much", he says, "....what pilgrimage is about for a lot of people". Certainly, his renderings of Walsingham inspire positive thoughts, with sun-kissed trees mirroring Nature's capacity to engage the emotions, invigorating possibility rather than limitation.
Ramsay's impressions of Walsingham and of the Brecklands are remarkable, and the London exhibition provides a unique opportunity to see a familiar part of our county at a time when it is being introduced to a much wider audience.
His website can be visited at http://www.ramsaygibb.co.uk/ and that of the Francis Kyle Gallery at http://www.franciskylegallery.com/ . Don't miss out on this chance to enjoy a highly original artist's tribute to one of Norfolk's most celebrated areas.
