This online exhibition includes the paintings and graphic work on show at Clare Hall Cambridge. A graduate college founded in 1966 specifically for researchers, postgraduate students, and visiting scholars, located in the heart of the University at Herschel Road, Cambridge.

The exhibition was devised by friends with the help of Fiona Blake of Clare Hall as curator, and the help and advice of Frances Spalding, writer and art historian, who have made this show of my paintings a reality. It is a celebration; marking the event in 1975, fifty years ago, when I introduced my work to Cambridge with an exhibition at St Michael’s Hall in the city centre. The event subsequently led to my being an active participant in the city art scene from the mid 1970s to the 1990s, during which as a member of the Cambridge Society of Painters and Sculptors, and later its chairman, my paintings were shown regularly at the Fitzwilliam Museum, at Kettle’s Yard, and various other venues there.

The title of this exhibition refers to my struggles against the odds, that my work even then, although appreciated by many, was quite out of line with the trends in the visual arts of the time; and I might add it still is. I had begun my career as a painter in the early 1960s in London, as an advocate of Modernism, a painter of abstracts, a member of the AIA, the Artists international Association, considered then to be a bastion of the avant-garde. I wished to be “cutting edge”, but finally realised it restricted me to be able to fully express myself. After years of experimentation it culminated in 1974 with the painting “Winter Washday”; which is on show here. It is a scene of everyday ordinary life, a vast subject, which has been the theme of my work ever since; almost a mission, to record a little of our time; the fleeting moment. As in old age I am aptly aware, that all is so soon forgotten.

Malcolm Ryan

Clare Hall is normally open seven days each week from 10 am until 5pm. As a graduate college it is sometimes closed for special occasions. Visitors to the exhibition at Clare Hall, would be advised to check availability of opening first, by contacting the porters lodge there:- porters@clarehall.cam.ac.uk or by telephoning 01223 332360