Midwinter spring is its own season
 Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown, 
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic. 
When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire, 
The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches, 
In windless cold that is the heart's heat, 
Reflecting in a watery mirror 
A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon. 
And glow more intense than blaze of branch, or brazier, 
Stirs the dumb spirit: no wind, but pentecostal fire In the dark time of the year. Between melting and freezing 
The soul's sap quivers. There is no earth smell 
Or smell of living thing. This is the spring time 
But not in time's covenant. Now the hedgerow 
Is blanched for an hour with transitory blossom
 Of snow, a bloom more sudden
 Than that of summer, neither budding nor fading, 
Not in the scheme of generation. 
Where is the summer, the unimaginable Zero summer?

T.S Eliot, ‘Little Gidding’ 1942

‘Fire & Frost’ is inspired by the elemental forces of burning embers and dancing frosts. The source of its inspiration is T.S Eliot’s ‘Little Gidding’, first published in 1942. The showcase includes pots, paintings, works on paper and cloth and brings together the work of three artists:

The late, great, Dante Elsner who was born in Krakow in 1920 and died in London in 1997. During his lifetime he produced an extraordinary body of Raku works as well as ink paintings. In both his painting and his pottery, he prized above all the qualities of spontaneity and honesty in relation to form, line and colour. His life as an artist cannot be separated from the turmoil of the 20th century in central Europe; in many ways it represents a series of personal responses to the upheavals of his time. Elsner’s work is included in the permanent collection of the Ashmolean, Oxford (United Kingdom).

Matthew Harris, born in 1966 in Kent and now living and working in Stroud, Gloucestershire. Harris makes wonderfully layered, abstract works in paper and cloth which oscillate with colour, texture and rhythm. Using techniques of painting, patching, darning and stitching, his works are directly informed by his passion for music. Harris has exhibited widely throughout the U.K, Europe, the United States and Japan and has work included in The Whitworth Museum and Art Gallery and Crafts Council Collection, (United Kingdom).

And finally, Vincent Black, a London based painter born in 1975 whose works portray deep personal emotions, as he takes the viewer into hazy constructed worlds of solitary figures and vast open, enigmatic, landscapes. Blacks works are included in the NHS Permanent Collection.

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