Lewes exhibition

Et in Arcadia is the title of the exhibition from Peter Chasseaud at the Star Brewery Gallery, Castle Ditch Lane, Lewes, BN7 1YJ from May 30 to June 7.

In this new exhibition he focusses on the iconic, and occasionally ironic, arcadian, features of the very centre of Lewes (River and Harveys Brewery, castle, ancient mounds, special and mysterious buildings surrounded by trees and foliage, bowling green, pavilion, etc.) and other related themes such as “the terrible beauty of threatening seas.”

The title of the exhibition “reflects the presence, even in Arcadia, of the disturbing sense of the threatening, of mortality.”

“I am a painter and printmaker (lithography, etching, letterpress) who also works in several other media, including photography and 3-D. After a Foundation course at Croydon College of Art, I went on in the mid-1970s to the Fine Art Painting course at Brighton Poly (now University of Brighton) at Grand Parade.

“I have been working and exhibiting in and around Lewes since 1972. Since my last show, in 2024, at the Star Brewery Gallery I have continued to develop landscape, townscape and seascape drawn and painted images inspired by rural and urban topography, particularly the Sussex weald and downland – its swelling hill-forms and concave valleys, its trees, skies and heavenly bodies.

“My interest in landscape encompasses related fields such as topography, cartography, flight and aerial photography. Incidentally, my first flight over Mount Caburn, near Lewes, which features in many of my paintings, was made in a converted Tiger Moth biplane. This flight had a profound effect on my relationship with landscape.”