Clare Woods Work at Kettle's Yard

British artist Clare Woods (b.1972) spent part of 2020 recovering from major surgery. Friends and family sent her bouquets of flowers. She took photographs of the flowers and, when she recovered, turned them into paintings. 

 

Woods has created many works of flowers in different medium, since then. One of those works is currently on view at Kettle’s Yard, the University of Cambridge’s modern and contemporary art gallery. 

 

The exhibit, Handpicked: Painting Flowers from 1900 to Today features paintings done over the past 125 years by more than forty artists.

 

Woods began her training as a sculptor. She received her MA in Fine Art from Goldsmith’s College in London and has been painting for more than thirty years. 

 

Night Walk and Idle Hands, available at VFA are both screen prints with woodblock, done in 2020.

 

Handpicked: Painting Flowers from 1900 to Today is currently on view at Kettle’s Yard and will run through September 6, 2026. 

 

Woods’ paintings are currently part of a group show at the Perriton Gallery in New York. She has upcoming solo museum exhibits at  Pitzhanger Manor, the Towner Eastbourne and The Holburne Museum in the UK and at the Esbjerg Kunstmuseum in Denmark.

 

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One of America’s most innovate artists and educators, Sam Gilliam (1933-2022) remains an inspiration to, and a supporter of, artists throughout the world.

 

The Sam Gilliam Foundation was established in 2023, just a year after the artist’s death. The Foundation’s Board of Directors recently announced the appointment of Dr. Steven Nelson as its inaugural Executive Director. Nelson was the Dean of the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

 

The Foundation, whose mission is to support “emerging and longtime artists, art students, scholars, curators, and the cultural ecosystem at large” has just awarded $75,000 to Guatemala-based artist and poet Edgar Calel. 

 

 

Gilliam was born in Mississippi and spent his adulthood in Washington, D.C., where he became part of the Washington Color Field Movement. Around 1969, while preparing for a show at the Corcoran Gallery of Art he hit upon the idea of draping his canvasses on the walls of the gallery. “Using the large spaces meant that I reincorporated the idea of how many of the Washington Color Field painters' paintings were painted off the stretcher and then put on the stretcher. “ he said in a 2011 interview with the National Endowment for the Arts. “So I simply made mine bigger and eliminated the stretchers.”

 

Gilliam expanded his works, not just in size, but in design, medium and style. Examples of his mixed media works are available at VFA.

 

Sam Gilliam: His Art of Printmaking is currently on view at 

the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art in Laurel, Mississippi through  July 26, 2026.

 

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Just a reminder….we’re getting ready for the Hamptons Fine Arts Fair July 9-12. We’ll give you an update and  the details soon. 

 

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References:

Valentina Di Liscia. Art Movements: Sam Gilliam Foundation Names Its First Director. Hyperallergic. June 11, 2026.

ArtForum. Edgar Calel Honored with $75,000 Sam Gilliam Award. May 19, 2026.

Don Ball. Sam Gilliam. National Endowment for the Arts. 2011.

 

Please contact us if you would like more information about the works of Clare Woods and Sam Gilliam available at VFA.

June 24, 2026