Gallery

• Robert P Stockle has rented part of the old cowshed to teach painting, and to display his lighter works. He says his 'day job is painting historic maritime pictures, but when you have to get 300 ropes in the right place you need some light relief!' These pictures are the result of his breaks. Usually they are paintings of land or sea scapes, sometimes simply of water. He paints with a sense of humour and experiments ingeniously with colour. There is often considerably more in the picture then appears at first glance, and each picture stimulates wide ranging conversation as well as being wonderfully decorative. Prices range from £10 to over £200 and pictures are framed and unframed and on a variety of sizes of materials.

• The picture above shows a selection of the paintings. Note the range of colours used to portray land, sea and sky, and the use of textured finishes to add to the affect. The little picture at the top left produces strong memories of night time crossings of the Solent, and the bolder sunsets are typical of those seen from headlands in the Bristol Channel.

• Who warms themselves round the camp fire? This picture is a wonderful introduction to the paintings. Suggestions vary from witches to Druids with Aborigines thrown in. The gloom in the background adds to the mystery, but as you become accustomed to the picture your eyes pick out 'Fairy Grottos' in the areas you thought were black. The further back you stand the less threatening the surrounding gloom becomes, but the loss of familiar detail draws you back to the picture.

• This wave is the wrong colour - or is it? But I DO remember a moonlit wave as intense! It is heaping itself up as it reaches shallow water, but it has not broken yet. Where will it come to land, what destruction will it cause, where has it come from? It can't stand like that it must sweap on, or break and tumble.....and yet it hovers trapped in time, and yet full of energy....Could I swim into its cold power.... could I sail my dinghy through it.....would even Canberra survive...

• Decoupage

• Oil on canvass

• Oil on suede

• Tatting

• Water colour

• Cross stitch

Subjects include :-