Hill Farm Gallery, at Moston, Sandbach, is set in beautiful gardens and is run by Chris and Richard House, opening for four days each week. The gallery is in a converted outbuilding, where Chris and Richard work with Cheshire Artists Network to host exhibitions of established and emerging artists in a variety of mediums, including paint, sculpture, photography and installations. The gardens in which the gallery sits are part of the National Garden Scheme and Chris and Richard have established a glorious woodland garden, including wildflowers, an orchard and wildlife pond with conservation and native varieties of plants.
It is the gallery that interests me most, however, and on my most recent visit, the works by James, 24, son of Chris and Richard and a startlingly talented young artist.
‘I have been drawing for as long as I remember,’ James says, ‘my earliest memory being around six years old. I knew from the age of 11 that being an artist was something I could do, and my focus has always been on drawing animals.’
James loves wildlife and conservation and this is reflected in his work, with a lot of the larger pieces shown in the gallery inspired by a visit to South Africa in 2018. When
I say ‘larger’, I mean huge. They are so big he draws them on top of a pool table in the gallery, with some taking up to two years to complete, which is more than apparent in the incredible detail.
‘I go into a bit of a daze when I start to draw,’ he says. ‘Covid was a great time for me in this respect, as I could just zone out and disappear into my drawing.’
James’s skill at 18 was sufficient to send him on to University of the Arts London, where he started a course in Fine Art Drawing. He chose not to complete his degree, however, deciding the structure wasn’t right for him.
‘At university the wildlife work I was doing had to take a back-burner to the more formulaic routine of learning technique,’ James says, ‘and it wasn’t long before I decided that it just wasn’t for me.’
I am not sure what James is capable of can be taught. I have seen many very talented graphite artists, but James’s work is different. The animals in the drawings, especially the large ones, have real presence; a soul I might say. But whether you sense this or not, his talent for almost photo-real art is undeniable.
‘Going forward it’s my plan to sell my work and also undertake private commissions,’ he says. ‘I already undertake private commissions for drawing pets, some of which you can find on my Instagram – @jameshouse_art. I really need to get better at promoting myself there, though. I also want to enter more competitions.’
James was a finalist in the 2024 David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation Wildlife Artist of the Year with his Two Elephants drawing, a piece that took 72 hours to complete. I can only see success for this talented young artist whose passion for animals of all kinds is clear in every mark he makes on a page. His work really needs to be seen to be fully appreciated.
Hill Farm Gallery is open Friday to Monday, 10am–4pm,
hillfarm-gallery.co.uk
Art college is not for everyone
Deciding formal arts school training is not right for you is not as strange an action as you may think.
Pablo Picasso dropped out of the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid due to his dislike of the rigid academic teaching. He is in very good company: Keith Haring left art school in New York and went to work actively in activism in public spaces; Jean-Michel Basquiat just did his own thing, teaching himself art history and developing his own very distinctive and much-copied style; Salvador Dali didn’t finish art school either, though as he was actually expelled for ‘disturbing the peace’ I am not sure whether we can count him.
One of our most celebrated Northern artists, Geoffrey Key, has clear views on the benefit and drawbacks of art school, telling me in December 2024 that while he did attend art school, it was only after completing his course he was able to find his own ‘voice’ in art. When he left college, he spent a year trying to unlearn much of what he had been taught, as in his eyes everything he produced just looked like his art teacher’s work. He took himself away to Derbyshire and painted every day, often the same scene over and over again, to discover what his own style was and ‘painting out’, he says, his tutor’s style.
Now in his eighties, he is still painting and his work is highly collectable, with pieces sent across the globe and the value of his work, new and old, increasing.
I will leave you with a quote from Pablo Picasso: ‘It took me four years to paint like Raphael, buta lifetime to paint like a child.’
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