New image for The Friends
- Orchard Tambourines
We’ve had an image makeover!
Previously The Friends promotional material and the Bulletin masthead have carried the image of Sir Peter Blake’s Owl & the Pussy Cat. Recently, the committee decided it was time for a change and members visiting the Museum will have seen our new, permanent display stand, plus the new design of Membership leaflets, both carrying the image featured here. It also appeared for the first time on the masthead of the August edition of the Bulletin.
The work is by another knight, Sir Terry Frost, one of this country’s leading abstract painters. In the last decade of his life he explored the printmaking medium of woodcut and Orchard Tambourines was the result. The work was produced in 2000. This is significant. The Friends committee had wanted to purchase a work for the Art Gallery to celebrate the millenium, Sheena Stoddard, Curator of Fine Art, was tasked with finding something suitable, and this was the result.
- Sheena’s farewell
Coincidentally, Sheena has now left the Art Gallery after 27 years, and at her last attendance at the Friends July committee meeting she expressed pleasure that the image of Orchard Tambourines was being used in this way. (The work itself is a very large piece and is not currently on display in the Art Gallery).
In the picture Sheena is surrounded by the four chairmen she worked with. To her right is Carol Lear and Hugh Roberts; to her left, John Sansom and Joanna Brown. As our current Chairman, Joanna had just presented Sheena with The Friends’ farewell gift of a watercolour by Doris Hatt and a cheque. Sheena was also made a Life Member of The Friends.
(This item updated 18 August 2011)
