Exhibition: Gerry Dudgeon - A Life in Painting

Bridport Arts Centre is pleased to present a retrospective exhibition celebrating the life’s work of renowned artist, Gerry Dudgeon, who died in October 2023. Based in Beaminster Gerry was a well-known and well-loved artist who exhibited nationally.  

This exhibition traces the artist’s life, following the evolution of his career in art and the changes in his work over five decades. He was as inspired by the rhythmic curves of the Dorset and Devon landscape as by the culture and colour of other places.

Gerry enjoyed experimenting freely with paint, allowing his imagination to develop ideas through improvisation.  His paintings are as much about picture making as they are descriptive of specific locations.

After early figurative beginnings Gerry Dudgeon began to absorb ideas about abstraction while studying at Camberwell and Reading. His investigations into the nature and process of painting included a series of works of light and of air inspired by the Cornish artist Peter Lanyon that imagine the land from the sky, as if hang gliding, as well as a group of mixed media works that take as source material fragments of medieval stained glass.   

From the 1990s, inspired by travels to India, Morocco and Greece, as well as walks closer to his studio in Dorset, Gerry’s work developed rich and varied explorations of colour, married to a rigorous sense of structure. This fusion of imagery and technique resulted in a powerful body of work that combines a sense of place with mood and atmosphere. 

Born in Darjeeling, India, in 1952, Gerry Dudgeon read Modern Languages at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and then went to Camberwell College of Art where he graduated with first class honours.  He completed his Masters in Fine Art at Reading University in 1981 under the tutelage of Sir Terry Frost, and won the Boise Travelling Scholarship from the Slade School of Art which took him to New York to study American Abstract Expressionism.

The exhibition runs from 6 September to 12 October 2024