I am really looking forward to the opening of painter Eleanor Crow’s new exhibition - A Step Inside. The show, at the Town House gallery in Spitalfields will feature a series of oil paintings of interior spaces. In the work featured on the poster below, Eleanor creates a beautiful intimate portrait of a London kitchen. I love the play of light and shadow, falling gently across the canvas. And I also love the mix of elements - the timeless blue and white Delft tiles, juxtaposed so beautifully with the red star on the San Pellegrino bottle which immediately locates it in the world of today.

To quote the exhibition introduction -

Light falls gently across the interiors of shops, kitchens and domestic settings and although many of these are working spaces they are mostly unpeopled, all shown in quiet, contemplative moments with attention focused on how the light falls gently from windows across those objects which define each space. Across the pots, brushes and baskets, across the lines of bottles and jars: in variation and repetition each gives these spaces their particular quality.

Eleanor Crow - Interior at Straw London in Afternoon Light, 2021, photo Anna Arca

I was really flattered when Eleanor asked about painting my studio. As you can see below, the resulting painting is wonderful. I love the atmosphere she has captured - it feels very familiar to me, and yet so fresh and new, as if seen in a dream. It’s my studio - only so much more-so.

To quote Eleanor’s words about the painting:

…I liked the corkboards of charts and schedules as a backdrop, with their fluorescent dots and markings, the small colour notes and swatches – all indicative of Eleanor Pritchard's wonderful sense of colour, and how it creeps into even the smallest details in her studio. The colour of the utilitarian apron has an echo in the cardboard boxes and tape, and I liked the horizontals of the industrial table in grey-green, and the dusty pink of the wrapped ream of paper below. To the right can just be glimpsed the edge of a mysterious machine composed of wires, reminiscent of a sculpture by Alexander Calder…

Eleanor Crow - Eleanor Pritchard Winding Wool, 2021, photo Anna Arca

For more about Eleanor Crow’s work please see her website here.

The show runs at the Town House Gallery in Spitalfields from 20 November - 5 December.

Eleanor Crow - A Step Inside