After their time in the spotlight, watercolours by Maureen Little have made themselves at home at Zillah Bell, in Thirsk.

They'll continue to be hung, alongside other exhibitions, to the delight of reviewer, Louise Marshal

Evocation in Watercolour

Maureen Little has put together an exhibition of delicate and very sensitive watercolours.

Memories of scenes and landscapes are presented in the form of near abstract geometric patterns.

Our cognitive powers are played with as the surface patterns of triangles and squares begin, with looking to reveal deeper intelligible scenes.

These vary as having the whole field of the painting flickering with tiny meticulously painted shapes, to others where the shapes are limited to a simpler expression of a fewer larger motifs.

The works

May Walk: Noon is evidence of the former, as a whole woodland, its breezes, flowers and glimmering light are touched upon in every tiny shape on the pictures surface.

The triangles parallelograms etc., become the shafts of light, the reflections of light off particles – it is a fabulous play on our retinal responses. Standing at a distance the whole merges into the image of a large tree trunk in the midst of hazy heat, blossom, and insects.

To paint in so static a method and yet to produce such an expression of the movement and buzz of life is a brilliant achievement

Little also fills the whole paper with patterning. March 1st, Guisecliffe Wood is reminiscent of Gustav Klimt, and his love of glorious surfaces.

This is interesting as Klimt was very taken with the relationship between Music and Painting.

There is a strong musical quality to all of Maureen Little’s work, especially in the gentle rhythms that she brings about through repetitive patterning, with undulating tonal variations.

The vertical, narrow, rectangular designs of Charles Rennie Mackintosh seem to influence Flutterings.

Maureen is a native Glaswegian but denied that she had been thinking of his style when painting it. It’s colouring is superbly subtle, and once again its rhythms lend it a strong musical quality.

Tiled Pool achieves an expression of what the eye does faced with the moving surface of water, grasping at snatches of fleeting images.

Three fish are suggested in the field that is otherwise carefully painted with an aquamarine watery wash.

Here the patterning has been tacked at different angles, with the vague images of fish darting through the parallelograms.

The flat patterning cleverly expresses not only depth and space, but movement and flux as well.

Elsewhere, as in Winter Journey, Little uses a pattern of small framed squares, each is carefully coloured to bring about a sense of bleak space, of mist.

This most of all is reminiscent of a patchwork, but the amazing colouring means that the flat straight squares encapsulate a moving vision of a road, of the speed and the cold.

In striking contrast to this is the warm composition entitled :Cordoba.

The famous Mosque (Mezquita) in Southern Spain is remembered in a harmonious repetition of a simple arch motif with a warm terra-cotta ground.

This simultaneously evokes the Spanish heat and a sense of sanctuary.

Overall impression

In her tiny patchworks of watercolour shapes Maureen Little has created her own visual language – the more you look the more you see.

Quite often the effect of the colour juxtaposition (especially in works such as May Walk: Noon) causes the brain to respond with images that it expects to see.

Maureen Little told me she starts off every work with the same pencil grid, and then builds up the appropriate pattern.

The colours are already in her head and she works intuitively with this fixed image in mind.

What is outstanding in her work is her amazing sensitivity to light and the moment in hand.

It is almost as if she can mentally photograph not only the scene in front of her but her emotional response to it.

A fascinating and enriching exhibition that will help you re-examine your senses!

Review: Louise Marshal