Colin Orchard | Hidden Venice

Colin Orchard is known for painting his favourite locations, which include Cornwall, East Anglia and the historic promenades, canals and bridges of Venice. This new Venetian collection walks viewers through the city’s historic cloistered lanes, past secret doorways, though stone archways and by candy-striped mooring poles, revealing intimate views of the floating city’s grand Gothic architecture. The spectacular Church of Santa Maria della Salute, St. Mark’s Bell Tower and the Bartolomeo Colleoni are painted alongside the simple but equally inspiring beauty of time-worn stone steps, private loggias and secret courtyards. By way of a rich Mediterranean palette, and an exceptional sensitivity to the change of atmosphere from dawn, through midday to dusk, Colin’s paintings capture the subtle, sea-lit glow of Carrara marble and Istrian stone in the city of dazzling light and deep shadow, against glimpses of the pearl-green waters of the canals. 

Colin Orchard is strongly influenced by the Post Impressionist paintings of Walter Sickert and Edouard Vuillard, and accordingly his own works, created in oil on board, display an impressionist approach to colour, form and light. In 2015 New Craftsman Gallery hosted Colin’s landmark 80th birthday exhibition, and in 2022 we presented his very first collection of paintings inspired by the streets of St Ives, where he has lived and worked for nearly forty years. Colin was elected to the Royal Society of British Artists in 2007, and is included in author Marion Whybrow's book, St Ives 1983 to 1993; Portrait of an Art Colony. He has exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions and galleries Uk wide including David Messum, Medici, Walker Galleries, Ainscough and New Grafton Gallery.