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Exhibition of large-scale oil paintings, bronze sculpture and prints by Sunderland artist Ron Lawson celebrating the women of Sunderland's wartime industries.
The Engaging Gaze is showing at 24NE Gallery as part of their Another View exhibition, with work by Sunderland artist and sculptor Ron Lawson. If you've spent any time around St Peter's Riverside, you'll know him as the man behind the Molly sculpture. He also works under the name STANSON, and this show brings together three large-scale oil paintings—each 1.5 metres high—alongside bronze sculpture and fine art prints.
The whole thing is a tribute to the women of Sunderland's wartime industries. Lawson describes it as an important development in his practice, combining his long-standing interest in industrial heritage with a more expressive approach to figurative portraiture. He didn't want these women to be just historical representations of wartime workers; he wanted them as individuals with their own personalities, experiences, and identities, with a gaze that looks back at the viewer. The paintings trace the historic industrial connections between Consett's steelworks, the region's railway network, and Sunderland's shipyards, while the bronze portrait bust grew out of his expanding lost-wax casting practice.
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It's a local story told through a local artist, and the scale of the oils gives the figures a presence that's hard to miss. The original paintings have all sold to private collectors, but prints are available at the gallery if you want to take a piece of it home. You'll find the show at 24NE Gallery in Sunderland.
