Watercolour Now exhibition – Norwich Castle

A new exhibition exploring the distinctive qualities of painting in watercolour will open this October in the Timothy Gurney Gallery at Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery. Selected by the artist Simon Carter, Watercolour Now brings together recent work by eight contemporary artists who share a fascination with how watercolour can capture diverse and often fleeting relationships with light, colour, landscape and history.

Watercolour is a particularly versatile medium and has a long history of being used in different ways. The artists on show in Watercolour Now experiment with this in an exciting range of work, which includes vibrant abstract paintings and evocative responses to the natural environment. Simon Carter exhibits three watercolour paintings which take fragments of colour and shape from the marshes and waterways of East Anglia as their starting point. Also on display are paintings by Christopher Le Brun, which use transparent layers of watercolour to explore the impact of music composers on his creative work. Alf Löhr and Barbara Nicholls both exhibit a series of large-scale paintings, which engage the fluid qualities of watercolour paint in ambitious ways. Melanie Russell, Mark Stewart and Charlotte Verity experiment with process in their intimate studies of plants and seascapes, and James Faure Walker’s lively abstract works celebrate the energy and sense of immediacy that painting in watercolour can generate.

As part of the exhibition, the artists in Watercolour Now spent time exploring Norfolk Museums Service’s extensive collection of watercolours.  Many of these works date from the 18th and 19th centuries, a period when watercolour became strongly associated with depicting the natural world.  The artists chose works from these historical collections that they felt resonated with their own approaches to watercolour. These paintings, which include celebrated works by John Sell Cotman and rarely seen Norwich School watercolours, will be displayed in the Colman Watercolour Gallery during the exhibition.

(Charlotte Verity, CV 4 7, 2025, watercolour monotype. Image Stephen White and Co. ©Charlotte Verity)