New Sir Quentin Blake exhibition in Hastings

Liz Gilmore, director of Hastings Contemporary, said: “The irrepressible Sir Quentin Blake continues to be as creative and productive as ever. This autumn, the legendary artist is set to return to Hastings Contemporary with an exhibition of three new sets of pen drawings.”

Sir Quentin said: “For 50 years of my professional life, I stood at the lightbox making drawings, many of them commissioned, with a scratchy pen and a bottle of black ink. More recently I have been exploring the artistic possibilities of a ballpoint pen. However, after 4,000 imaginary portraits and many other drawings I thought it was time to go back to scratch.

“There are three sets of new drawings here: High Places and Lofty Structures inhabited by bearded sages and vultures; VTT – les velos tout terrain – of my own inventing; and Imaginary Portraits. I would like to say they have been done without making a single blot – but that wouldn’t be true.”

Ink is the latest exhibition in a series of new works created by the gallery’s artist patron, where previous shows, such as Feet in Water, Airborne and The Only Way to Travel, have all been hugely popular. The new display has been created especially for Hastings Contemporary and will be on display at the Foreshore gallery. For Sir Quentin, his ongoing relationship with Hastings Contemporary has opened up new possibilities, prompting him to explore new approaches and themes including migration and mental health in the knowledge that the results will find themselves “sympathetically shown in this extraordinary gallery … they are truly pictures for Hastings Contemporary.”

Liz added: “In his typical, instantly recognisable and inimitable style, the 90-year-old’s new pictures are full of movement, featuring phantasmagorical machines, characterful creatures and eccentric people. Recurrent themes of travel, the vitality of the human spirit, humour and a mischievous sense of the anarchic abound in these new drawings.”