Chris Powles’ painting ‘Ramsey Pier, To the North’ has been selected from over 1000 entries for the Sunday Times Watercolour Competition final exhibition of just 72 works.  
 
The Sunday Times competition is considered the largest and most prestigious watercolour competition in the UK, and Chris has now had paintings selected on four occasions, with last year’s entry,  ‘Industrial Carcass, Point of Ayre’ featuring on the exhibition webpage for the last 12 months.
 
Chris, who has lived in the Isle of Man since 1975, immediately felt an affinity to the dramatic Manx landscape, sensing an ambience created by events and emotion of the past.  Through his idiosyncratic atmospheric interpretations of the landscape he draws the viewer in to discover the multilayered implied imagery.
 
“‘Ramsey Pier, To the North’ is concerned with transient nature of man and the natural environment over time,” says Chris.  “The image is symbolic of the downturn in Manx tourism since its Victorian heyday, and of its lost heritage.  It is sad to think that the rusting carcass you see now is nothing like the Pier which was in full use, complete with train and a coffee shop at the end, when I moved to the Island.” 
 
This work has an ambiguity between realism and abstract areas of colour, form and texture.  The juxtaposition of the simple treatment of the sea and sky with the highly detailed painting of the decaying pier in the foreground creates balance and depth in the composition.
 
Chris, who was Head of Art at Ramsey Grammar School until 2000, has had a number of exhibitions at the Sayle Gallery as well as further afield.   His talent was recognised by celebrated Manx landscape painter Norman Sayle,  who wrote,  shortly before he died in 2007, “Although it’s many years (since) I first saw Chris Powles’ landscapes, they did stick clearly in my memory ...  some (early) works were tentative, (but) there was no doubt about what they sought to express.  What has emerged is work of considerable power, courageously conceived, meticulously composed and breathtakingly executed.”
 
Five years on, Chris’s work has developed even further and his success in the Sunday Times Watercolour Competition is testament to this.  ‘Ramsey Pier, to the North’ will feature in the Sunday Times exhibition at the Mall Galleries in London in September, and then at the Lightbox Gallery in Woking from 9 November as part of the exhibition’s UK tour. 
 
Chris is to have a solo exhibition – entitled “Seeking Solitude” - at the Sayle Gallery, Douglas this autumn from 19 October until 11 November 2012.   Although ‘Ramsey Pier, To the North.’  is not available,  the exhibition  will feature  the 2011 finalist ‘Industrial Carcass, Point of Ayre’,  two other paintings which were entered in the 2012 Sunday Times competition (and reached the shortlist of 250 works)  as well as another 28 previously unseen recent paintings.
 
 
Location: The Sayle Gallery, Villa Marina Arcade, 1-3 Harris Promenade, Douglas, IM1 2HN
Opening times: 10am – 5pm Tue – Sat, 1.30 – 4.30pm Sundays, 1pm – 5pm Mondays
Admission: FREE
Telephone: 01624 674557