Fresh Art Fair, Cheltenham — April 2024

In April 2024 I exhibited at the Fresh Art Fair in Cheltenham, held at the Centaur Building at Cheltenham Racecourse. The fair is a well-established fixture in the art calendar, drawing a broad and engaged audience over several days and bringing together a wide range of galleries and artists working in contemporary painting, sculpture, and printmaking.

Painting by Peter Corr to be exhibited at Fresh 2024 at Stand 19 with Gallery Linton59

Live Painting Demonstration

As in previous years, I gave a live painting demonstration at the fair — working in oil and cold wax in front of an audience, and talking through the process as the painting developed. These demonstrations are something I find genuinely valuable, both as a way of communicating the physical character of the medium and as an opportunity to work in a different context from the studio.

Painting in public introduces a particular kind of pressure and focus. There is no opportunity to leave a passage and return to it the following day; decisions have to be made in real time, and the painting has to find its own direction in front of an audience. I find that this constraint, rather than being limiting, tends to produce work of a directness and energy that is difficult to achieve in the more considered atmosphere of the studio.

Painting by Louisa Corr to be exhibited at Stand 19 with Gallery Linton59

The Work on Show

The selection of paintings I brought to Cheltenham in 2024 drew primarily from my forest and fenland series — works in oil and cold wax that explore the layered, textured surfaces that have become central to my practice. The fair offered an opportunity to show these works to a new audience and to engage directly with visitors about the process and materials behind them.

Peter Corr painting live at Fresh Art Fair 2023