Byron's Bear and Menagerie 5th October - 2nd November

Artist’s Note:

Earlier this year marked the bi-centenary of Byron’s death and whilst reading a review in the TLS, I spotted a paragraph that said whilst a student at Cambridge, Byron kept a bear as the rules forbade the keeping of dogs (but not bears). On further research I discovered that the poet always loved animals and kept an ever-growing menagerie, which Percy Shelley lists as comprising...

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“Ten horses, eight enormous dogs, three monkeys, five cats, an eagle, a crow, and a falcon; and all these, except the horses, walk about the house, which every now and then resounds with their unarbitrated quarrels, as if they were the masters of it… P.S. I find that my enumeration of the animals in this Circean Palace was defective…I have just met on the grand staircase five peacocks, two guinea hens, and an Egyptian crane”.

Added to which there were mentions by others of a crocodile, two geese he saved from the butcher’s block when living in Pisa, a goat with a broken leg, a tame wolf, a fox and a parrot.

For a time Byron actually lived in Cheltenham at Georgiana Cottage, where he had a liaison with an opera singer and met Joseph Grimaldi, the witty actor and clown. Previously as a child he had visited the town with his mother who had taken him to visit a clairvoyant or fortune-teller; she predicted both the years of his fame and his early death.

This exhibition includes a selection of other works including more animals such as a homage to Edward Lear In the Pea-Green Boat, Angel & Tiger through the Sunflowers and Elephant, Angel & Red Parrots. The story of The Flood that encompasses all the animals is as important today as it ever was.

PJ lives and works near Cheltenham. Her paintings combine a highly distinctive style with extraordinary technical mastery. Rather than painting from photographs or direct observation, PJ prefers to draw from a combination of remembered observation and imagination, resulting in an intuitive and resolved composition.

Few contemporary artists are more accomplished at depicting perspective or depth of field, and the viewer has a sense of being invited into each painting, encouraged by the inclusion of the frame in the picture surface.

An innovator in the new English figuration, PJ Crook renders urban crowds, which while they consist of individuals absorbed in their own newspaper, cocktail or itinerary are nonetheless interchangeable archetypes. Or sometimes they are members of a family who are more interested in their own game, reading or mirror than in the person in front of them. There is always a poignant solitude surrounding these characters onto which the theatrical staging adds a colourful dash of humour.

The artist is a virtuoso in the mischievous art of beguiling our perceptions and expectations. She plays with the notions of painting: not only does she add almost undetectable carved reliefs on the flat canvas but she then extends them into open boxes - where all the surfaces, both inside and outside, are engaged in the narrative.

PJ confuses our sense of space; the spectator, deceived by the mirror effects, often looks at a scene actually taking place behind him. She plays games with questions of identity; twins are sometimes the same person, likewise opposing players can be reflections of each other. PJ is an artist of international repute, having dealers in Paris, Canada and New York as well as London. Her renown stretches as far as the Morohashi Museum of Modern Art in Japan and more locally in the collection at The Wilson Art Gallery and Museum in Cheltenham and at the Museum of Gloucester.

Her work also features in many major private and public collections including that of Imperial War Museum London; Ha’avatz, Israel; El Mundo, Madrid; La Ville de Paris; the Department for Transport, London; the late King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia; the President of Estonia; Conrad Black; Lord Bamford; the Marquess of Bath; Paul Allen; Jackie Collins; Peter Gabriel; Robert Fripp and Toyah Willcox.

PJ has received numerous awards including an honorary doctorate of art in 2010 and MBE for services to art in 2011, and has been awarded a Tony Steel Prize by the Royal West of England Academy at this year’s annual open exhibition.