^{_{Snail, Beachy Head. Courtesy Art Space Gallery.}}

An exhibition of the work of the late Jeffery Camp, titled Some People Dream A Lot, opens today at Kestle Barton, Cornwall. It is the first exhibition of the artist’s solo works since his death last year, and seeks to compare and contrast the two great recurrent motifs of his paintings; the crumbling cliffs at Beachy Head and the fleeting beauty of cut flowers.

^{_{Lilac, 2014. Courtesy Art Space Gallery.}}

^{_{Rooks At Beachy Head, 2011. Courtesy Art Space Gallery.}}

Camp spent nearly the entirety of his long life painting, and it was landscape and the edges of it that were fundamental to his painting since the 1940s, when he returned to his native Suffolk to paint the beaches at Pakefield. In the 1960s Camp found the epic chalk cliffs at Beachy Head, Sussex, and this landmark became the defining motif of his life’s work, dominating paintings for the next 50 years.

In Camp’s final burst of painting in the last stage of his life (c.2010-12), cut flowers began to appear with reclining bodies in place of the cliff edges. Fresh blooms, bound to shrivel and fade, offer a different sense of time passing. Exhibiting them at Kestle Barton, when the venue’s own expansive gardens and wildflower meadows are in full bloom, adds an additional sense of place and vitality to the works. As Camp himself said, inspiring the title of this exhibition,

‘Some people dream a lot. Daydreaming is worthwhile but you must really force it and make it happen.’

_{^{Dark Iris – Night [The Young Architect], 2006. Courtesy Art Space Gallery.}}

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‘Some People Dream A Lot’ is curated by Dan Howard-Birt in collaboration with Michael Richardson / Art Space Gallery, and runs from now until 5 September. More information here.