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Green Pebble Magazine
Rood Hall Studio
Bungay Road
Beccles NR34 8HE
Articles> Mary Gundry
If there is one contemporary Suffolk artist whose star appears to have risen as fast as the town she paints, that artist is Mary Gundry. By Ruby Ormerod.
A
figurative water colourist, Mary Gundry’s now-familiar idyllic images
of children playing on Southwold beach and crabbing in the shallows of neighbouring
Walberswick can be found on cards, calendars and mugs throughout the region.
What is less known outside Southwold is that her family portraits are on
countless East Anglian living room walls, commissioned by parents eager
to capture their offspring’s childhood.
Indeed, if commissions are an indicator, it must be possible to credit Mary
with single-handedly making watercolour family scenes fashionable in the
Southwold region. She is in such demand, her calendar is full for up to
six months in advance.
This writer first came across Mary Gundry’s work in the unforgiving
heat of the Middle East. There, surrounded by formal Islamic art, it seemed
both incongruous and amusing to find two large watercolour paintings devoted
to children enjoying a breezy Southwold seaside.
Quickly amusement was crowded out by nostalgia for the familiar settings
of home. These portraits were inescapably English; their subject matter,
composition, light and palette made it virtually impossible for the imagery
to have been from anywhere else. She captured Englishness so well.
It was also evident the artist was not simply ‘competent’ at
figure drawing, but extremely accomplished. Her subject matter may have
been infused with a feel good factor – hardly the material of modern
day ‘serious’ artists – but her technique was mature and
confident.
The cumulative effect was that the two paintings evoked a primal, parental
response. Forget hoodies, gang violence and bullying. When seen through
Mary’s eyes, children were children in the purest sense; as parents
would wish them to remain, forever. The children in her paintings were focused,
relaxed and innocent. They still played as their parents and grandparents
played, with sticks and buckets and inquisitive minds.
Unforgivably nostalgic? Contrived?
Perhaps. Except that a trip to Southwold beach on a sunny summer’s
day will reveal gaggles of such children in their floral swimsuits and pirate
t-shirts, and the galleries selling Mary Gundry’s work will confirm
what so many spontaneously say – people love Mary’s work...
This is only a small part of the article.
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