On the prowl in Oxfordshire | John Lendis at Stratford Gallery
John Lendis, The Bridge at Ablington, Oil on canvas, 80 x 100 cm, courtesy of Stratford GalleryIf there’s one place where mankind can claim victory in the struggle to tame and colonise nature, it’s got to be the Cotswolds. Which is probably why the ‘Beast of Burford’ – a black panther supposedly on the prowl in Oxfordshire – has become such a popular local legend. Reports of sightings of this elusive wild animal have filled a lot of column inches in the Oxford Mail over the years.
The painter John Lendis has made the Cotswolds his home, after spells in Australia, New Zealand, Bali, Japan and Afghanistan, and is fond of inhabiting his landscapes of the area with repeated motifs: of foxes, angels and Landrover Defenders.
For his latest exhibition at the Stratford Gallery in Broadway (‘the jewel of the Cotswolds’), entitled The Beast of Burford, he has chosen to paint representations of the fabled black cat in familiar local settings, such as Ablington, Bledington, Idbury and, of course, Burford. His panthers are flat, and stylised; the landscapes behind them are gracefully painterly: a visual exploration of the interplay between myth and reality.
Lendis (born 1950) has had an interesting career, that spans five decades. After graduating in textile design at Nottingham University, he moved to Sydney, Australia, where he was for a time employed to churn out a hundred paintings a week, which were sold door-to-door by impecunious students. “I made some terrible, terrible, terrible mistakes: I wish I could go back in time and burn them,” he remembers. Coming to his artistic senses, and determined to ‘put beauty into the world’, he completed a BA and an MA in Fine Art at the University of Tasmania, and his subsequent work has been rather more refined, often exploring themes of mythology, fantasy and folklore.
Stratford Gallery assistant Katie Price tells me that Lendis’ work attracted a lot of attention at the 2022 British Art Fair, and this exhibition opens – both online and in the gallery – on June 24. If you’re driving to Broadway to see it in the flesh, keep your eyes peeled… just in case.