James Farrelly: Spring Collection

James Farrelly is an American painter who lives and works in Brooklyn. His artistic vision, however, was formed by his upbringing and long residence in Rome. A sun-flooded, laconic Mediterranean sensibility pervades his art. The boldness of Farrelly's colour choices and the daring simplification of his forms, recall the mythic directness of Etruscan wall-painting quite as much as the later experiments of Bonnard and Matisse.

In his new [2013] exhibition, his first in London for ten years, Farrelly explores the possibilities of collage. Using torn pieces of painted paper he assembles images - relatively small-scale landscapes and flower pieces - that combine an extraordinary sense of both the lightness and the power of natural world.