Norman Neasom

‘Man made the town,’ was a common enough saying in the eighteenth-century,‘ but God made the countryside.’ This is no longer so true: humanity’s reach is almost everywhere. But Norman Neasom’s paintings and drawings – like those of several other British artists over the past century or so, record both that old, quieter, simpler England, as well as its slow, gradual passing. Neasom’s work takes joy in the everyday life of both the pastoral and urban worlds: an old lady out shopping, a group of ramblers by the seaside, a couple on the beach. Some are a little stranger and more mystical – with more than a hint of the magic and the superstitions that for centuries underlay rural life.