MK Gallery, Milton Keynes
Usually relegated to the roles of hostess, lover or muse, the painter’s independent spirit shines through in the power of the patterns and colours in this, the largest solo show ever devoted to her work
Vanessa Bell has seduced me. She has offered nothing fancier than bottles and a bowl, by a window that looks out on terracotta roofs and wooded hills. The frame of the window runs just inside the frame of the painting, squeezing the table and its contents into a narrow strip. The stout blue flask is clear as a Cornish sky in May, the delicate stoppered bottle the colour of a midsummer sea. Beyond the claustrophobia of the room lie buildings licked with all the rich red pinks of a rose garden.
She was aptly named, Bell. At her best, her colours ring with clarity – chiming one against the other yet held distinct. She luxuriates in it, but the spaces she conjures are lived. This is not a mere still life, but a space for bodies, a home. For all its tonal richness the constraints of the interior space also delineate Bell’s position: a young mother, gazing through the window into a world through which she cannot move with freedom.
A World of Form and Colour is at MK Gallery, Milton Keynes from 19 October until 23 February
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