Mary Webb: Journeys in Colour - Press information

27th Sep 2011 - 26th Feb 2012

The largest ever exhibition of works by the artist Mary Webb opens at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, on Tuesday 27 September and runs until Sunday 26 February 2012.

Hommage à Sonia Delaunay, 1969 Mary Webb Read more »	Mary Webb in her Studio, 2011 Photo: Andi Sapey Read more »	Utah, 2011 Mary Webb Read more »
Spring Colour Study, 1991 Mary Webb Read more »	Dunwich charcoal, 1977 Mary Webb Read more »	San Filippo I, 2007 Mary Webb Read more »

Writing in the Observer, art critic Tim Hilton described Mary Webb as 'a little known but treasurable artist'. Mary Webb has been producing bold abstract work for nearly 50 years as well as teaching painting at art schools in Harrogate and Norwich. Journeys in Colour celebrates Webb’s work from 1967 to the present day and includes 60 paintings together with screen prints, drawings and collages. A new series of works never seen before, which have been inspired by a trip to Utah, USA, will be on display. The exhibition also includes a work by the artist from the UEA Collection of Abstract and Constructivist, Art, Architecture and Design, which is permanently housed at the Centre.

Mary Webb’s work is abstract and striking, the designs composed of squares and rectangles using a bold palette of colours. Colour is evenly applied within each section and the shape of her work is always square. Webb has the sensibility of a landscapist, much of her work produced as reflections on her travels, naming her works after the places that inspired them. Her most recent series of works relate to a trip to Utah in USA. Other localities that form the basis and titles for works in the exhibition include Corsica, Crete, Isle of Manhattan, Russia, San Luis, and San Filippo. Other works relate to places closer to where she lives such as Dunwich in Suffolk and Brancaster in Norfolk.

The exhibition reveals Mary Webb’s continued interest in experimenting with colour. The Spring Colour Study series (1993), produced when Webb wasn’t travelling and was working on generating ideas in her studio, is a typical example of her setting herself a challenge and posing herself the question “what would happen if…?”. She explains that the “choice of colour was an attempt to find a red red, a blue blue etc” and that the black lines around the shapes were “the result of curiosity about what would happen if I put them there” commenting that “up to then colours did not have a boundary round them. It made the shapes very distinct but hard to arrange”.

Mary Webb studied in the Department of Fine Art at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne from 1958 to 1963. She then took a postgraduate course at Chelsea School of Art from 1963 to 1964 before teaching at Harrogate for two years. From 1966 until 1990, Webb taught painting at Norwich University College of the Arts (then known as Norwich School of Art). Mary Webb met Sonia Delaunay in Paris during the 1960s and cites her as an influence. The exhibition this autumn includes a work by Webb from Centre’s UEA Collection, which explicitly acknowledges the importance of Delaunay, entitled Hommage à Sonia Delaunay (1969).