EXHIBITION CELEBRATES LOCAL ARTIST, ALAN CAINE

EXHIBITION CELEBRATES LOCAL ARTIST, ALAN CAINE

On Thursday 25th May 2023 an exhibition of Alan Caine's paintings opened at Bishop Street Methodist Church in Leicester's Town Hall Square. The free exhibition, entitled 'Patterns Engraved into the Earth', will run until Saturday June 24th, open from 10.00am to 4.00pm Monday to Fridays and 10.00am to 3.00pm on Saturdays.
Alan Caine (1936-2022) was well-known to many in Leicester as co-Director of the Attenborough Arts Centre and an inspiring and insightful teacher of Art and Art History at the University of Leicester. This exhibition focuses on his works inspired by the landscape.
At the opening, Richard Gill gave a short talk on Alan and his approach to painting. He remarked that: "Of the underlying themes in Alan's pictures, a sense of things mounting up comes over — two-dimensional shapes pile one on top of another — especially true in the landscapes in this exhibition. Our eyes are inexorably lifted up to the hills.
"Another theme is the intertwinedness of things, coupled with the idea that there is always something to look past, something beyond, or perhaps something in the way.
"But amongst these and many other motifs, an enduring theme is of things having a centre. Alan, I think without realising it, was a voice against the idea that, 'Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world'. For him there is always a heart, there is always a centre, there is always something from which these blessings of the world flow."