An online version of the 2024 Samuel Palmer Art Exhibition is now available. Please click the link below to view the catalogue.
Samuel Palmer: Visionary Landscapes
The Samuel Palmer Art exhibition explored the life and work of Samuel Palmer’s Shoreham Years with responses from artists living near Shoreham or influenced by Palmer’s work. Created by the Darent Valley Landscape Partnership Scheme, part of Kent Downs National Landscape.
The exhibition was on show at Kaleidoscope Gallery in Sevenoaks from 12th January to 12th March and Sir Peter Blake Gallery in Dartford from 16th March to 16th May 2024.
It has an interactive contents page so you can click through to areas of interest or artist.
The Darent Valley Landscape Partnership Scheme (DVLPS) invited artists within the Sevenoaks and Dartford areas to submit works for an exhibition, in response to Victorian artist Samuel Palmer’s body of work created during his time in Shoreham, Kent. The DVLPS team selected a range of works to reflect specific aspects of Palmer’s creative methods and to support the stories told within the Samuel Palmer Trail, also commissioned by DVLPS. We invited those submitting works to use these Shoreham works as a point of inspiration, exploring the varied artistic techniques Palmer used – ink, watercolour, oil, gum arabic, pencil – or perhaps his fascination with shadows, moonlight or tree details, or it might be the visionary element of his work which appealed. Or, of course, the beauty of the Darent Valley landscape surrounding the village.
The exhibition featured facsimiles of a selection of Palmer’s most important Shoreham works, together with responses from a variety of artists together with collaborators from earlier DVLPS projects.
A panel made a selection from the work submitted. Among those on the panel were Colin Harrison, Senior Curator of European Art at the Ashmolean Museum (and a Palmer specialist), Victoria Threlfall, artist and writer of the Samuel Palmer Trail, Kit Boyd, a neo-romantic (and Palmer-influenced) artist who created the Darent Valley Line posters, and representatives from the Darent Valley Landscape Partnership Scheme and the Sir Peter Blake Gallery in Dartford.
The exhibition was curated by Sarah Newman, Curator, DVLPS.
With special thanks to:
Rosalind Barker and Sue Evans, Sevenoaks Visual Arts Forum and Kaleidoscope Gallery
Eija Burrell, Dartford Arts Network and Sir Peter Blake Gallery, Dartford
Alun Hughes, Sandra Hirons, Heritage Lottery Fund