Winter Heliotrope

Donald Teskey

Cromwell Place, London SW7 2JE

13 - 23 March 2024

Winter Heliotrope is a collaboration between painter, Donald Teskey and poet Amanda Bell.

The exhibition comprises 22 paintings and is accompanied by a handmade book by Fine Press Poetry with reproductions of fourteen paintings and accompanying poems, signed by both painter and poet.

The paintings and poems are drawn from the same wellspring - the river Dodder, which runs from its source in the Wicklow Mountains down into the city of Dublin where it enters the river Liffey.

While artist and poet have known and admired each other for more than twenty years, they came to the Dodder separately, unaware of each other’s long relationship with the river.

Donald Teskey has lived close to the since the 1980s and has made paintings in this location for decades. The proximity to the Dodder allowed him to access this valuable resource which produced an especially vibrant and freeing body of work.

These paintings were made during an unusually long snowfall in 2018. It allowed Teskey to take a new palate to a familiar place and to feel foreign or blinded slightly in a landscape he has called his home.

For Bell, whose poems often recall the minutiae of the natural world or the banality of everyday objects which expand into complex meaning. Not unlike Teskey’s paintings which elevate the visible into greater meaning, Bell’s poems unlock great truths with small observations. Her poems in this series recall the great Louis MacNeice, especially in his monumental 1967 poem, 'Snow'

For a full list of the 22 images in the exhibition please contact the gallery