Artist near Banbury transforms his garden wash house into pop-up gallery

Dave Watts from Lower Heyford will be opening up the pop-up gallery next month as part of the Oxfordshire Artweeks festival, which celebrates open studios and pop-up exhibitions across the county.

Dave, 66, has been sketching since the age of nine but only began painting pictures on a larger scale after he retired from his job as a BBC radio journalist.

Using a studio space in his house, he prominently creates pastel and watercolour pictures of landscapes from around Oxfordshire but also mixes in pictures from his travels around the UK and from visits to Greece, Venice, and New York.

The studio space in Dave’s house is too small to host the gallery, so he made the decision to renovate the 19th-century former wash house in his garden from a log and wood storage space to an area where people can enjoy his artwork.

Dave said: "The studio in our house where I paint is like a shoe box; there is only space for one other person apart from me. So it would be impossible to exhibit there.

"The old part of our cottage dates from around 1800. The wash house must have been built some time in the nineteenth century. It’s semi-detached, with a fireplace.

"I like the atmosphere you get from the old brick walls. Every available bit of wall will be packed with pictures. There will still be some logs in there, but they will have pictures tucked in among them."

This will be the first time Dave has staged an exhibition of his own work, although last year he had a picture selected by the Pastel Society for their annual exhibition at the Mall Galleries in London.

One of Dave’s works has also recently been selected for this year’s Pastel Society exhibition, which will run from May 24 to June 3.

The wash house gallery at 102 Freehold Street, Lower Heyford, will be open from May 13 to 21 between 10.30 am and 5.30 pm and people can also see Dave's pictures on the Oxfordshire Artweeks’ website www.artweeks.org/v/dave-watts