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Wednesday 12-2pm then 6-9pm
Thursday 5-10pm
Sunday 12-5pm

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Saturdays 11am-4pm

Carole Romaya: Potato

25th January – 13th February 2025

The Farmer’s Arms is delighted to present an exhibition of new work by artist Carole Romaya dedicated to the huge variety of the potato.

Romaya takes a conceptual approach to drawing and painting with a recurring focus on the beauty of the everyday, on making the ordinary extraordinary. The artist often works in series, taking her subjects to the point of exhaustion – for instance, meticulously drawing multiple mobile phones in biro in previous work and now, for Grizedale Arts, multiple varieties of the potato in watercolour.

To develop the new work, Romaya spent an extensive period researching varieties and suppliers, as the artist has said ’my knowledge of the potato, as a foodstuff and as a cultural, social, historical phenomenon, has increased tenfold in the process.’ The varieties shown here are largely painted at a 1:1 scale, with a few smaller ones enlarged to better show their details. Most were cleaned and dried before painting while a few are depicted ‘with the earth still clinging to them’. While wet Romaya has remarked the potatoes are ‘jewel-like’, like ‘pebbles in tide pools’, and while more muted when dry ‘the memory of hidden brightness finds its way into the watercolour’.

For Romaya, paying such close attention ‘to the disposable, ephemeral peel of the potato is to study a dynamic surface’, the results for her are ‘walking a line between figuration and abstraction’. Or as Adam Sutherland, The Farmer’s Arms Director has said:

…these works executed in Carole Romaya’s exquisite watercolours, give the humble tuber a hitherto unrecognised elegance and exoticism!

Adam Sutherland

Shown alongside Romaya’s works are a series of potato-shaped clay ‘spirit flasks’, crafted as a collaboration by Adam (on clay) with Carole (on slip) … in homage to the 18 th /19 th century clay vessels (used by farm labourers) known to have been shaped and painted like potatoes to disguise their illicit content.

Unknown Potter, Staffordshire, 1790.
© Courtesy Carole Romaya and Adam Sutherland

 

Carole Romaya lives & works in North Lancashire and studied sculpture at Newcastle University and Chelsea School of Art. Selected exhibitions include: 7th  John Ruskin Prize, 2025; Wells Art Contemporary, 2022; Be our Guest, Oriel Davies, 2013; A History of Cameraless Photography, Victoria & Albert Museum, 2011; Hunters & Collectors, Castlefield Gallery, 2003. Romaya’s work is held in public collections including Arts Council Collection, Victoria & Albert Museum, Bury Art Museum, and The Armitt, Cumbria, and in various private collections.

The Farmer’s Arms exhibition programme is supported by Arts Council England

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