'The fourteen artists featured in this exhibition were mostly participants in a university sponsored course I ran and when its four years were over, they chose to continue - for twenty years or so. Over time, some have left the group whilst others have joined: the injection of new blood has invariably been rejuvenating. They are diverse in their backgrounds: some are fine art graduates, others are post graduates; some are teachers, and there is even a sprinkling of civil servants. What unites them is the belief that art is indivisible: there is not one kind of art practised by the masters and a lesser art practised by everyone else. As a result they work with the utmost seriousness, informing themselves by visiting exhibitions, acquiring a knowledge of relevant examples and patiently and undogmatically developing their own form and content.
As a result the work that they have produced is also diverse. There is everything from precise evocations of Tyneside landscape to clotted painterly hints of domestic interiors, studies of swirling dynamics of water to post modern abstractions which are hybrids of wallpaper patterns and sprayed and splashed paint. (Their great grandfather was surely Kandinsky.) Add to this biblical narratives and painting which share the metaphysical speculations of Caspar David Friedrich and you have a very rich mix.
The painters are not, you will have guessed, novices. Indeed they share with the former distinguished Director of BBC's Radio 3, John Drummond, something invaluable. When a young suit at the Corporation explained to him that his services were no longer required, Drummond asked to know why. "Because you are tainted with experience." replied his assassin. Drummond was so tickled by this that he made it the title of his autobiography. I am pleased to report that the fourteen are similarly tainted.'
--William Varley
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