Dreams of the Everyday Exhibition Curated by Jonathan Anderson

Winifred Nicholson and Andrew Cranston share gallery walls in a two-stop show shaped by designer and collector Jonathan Anderson.

Dreams of the everyday: paintings by Winifred Nicholson & Andrew Cranston | Curated by Jonathan Anderson | Source: Ingleby Gallery
Dreams of the everyday: paintings by Winifred Nicholson & Andrew Cranston | Curated by Jonathan Anderson | Source: Ingleby Gallery

Dreams of the Everyday, an exhibition curated by Jonathan Anderson with gallerist Richard Ingleby, opens at the Pier Arts Centre in Stromness on 21 June. Winifred Nicholson’s clear-eyed still lifes from the 1930s sit beside Andrew Cranston’s painted book covers, their shared affection for domestic ritual linking works made nearly a century apart.

Dreams of the everyday: paintings by Winifred Nicholson & Andrew Cranston | Curated by Jonathan Anderson | Source: Ingleby Gallery
Dreams of the everyday: paintings by Winifred Nicholson & Andrew Cranston | Curated by Jonathan Anderson | Source: Ingleby Gallery
Dreams of the everyday: paintings by Winifred Nicholson & Andrew Cranston | Curated by Jonathan Anderson | Source: Ingleby Gallery

Dreams of the everyday: paintings by Winifred Nicholson & Andrew Cranston | Curated by Jonathan Anderson | Source: Ingleby Gallery
Dreams of the everyday: paintings by Winifred Nicholson & Andrew Cranston | Curated by Jonathan Anderson | Source: Ingleby Gallery
Dreams of the everyday: paintings by Winifred Nicholson & Andrew Cranston | Curated by Jonathan Anderson | Source: Ingleby Gallery
Dreams of the everyday: paintings by Winifred Nicholson & Andrew Cranston | Curated by Jonathan Anderson | Source: Ingleby Gallery

Nicholson’s tabletops, children’s portraits and luminous window views hum with colour drawn from Cumbria, Cornwall and beyond. Cranston answers with intimate interiors laid onto cloth-bound novels, the print of old titles flickering through thin washes of pigment. Together, the paintings suggest that everyday life, framed with care, can feel both familiar and slightly surreal.

Dreams of the everyday: paintings by Winifred Nicholson & Andrew Cranston | Curated by Jonathan Anderson | Source: Ingleby Gallery
Dreams of the everyday: paintings by Winifred Nicholson & Andrew Cranston | Curated by Jonathan Anderson | Source: Ingleby Gallery
Dreams of the everyday: paintings by Winifred Nicholson & Andrew Cranston | Curated by Jonathan Anderson | Source: Ingleby Gallery
Dreams of the everyday: paintings by Winifred Nicholson & Andrew Cranston | Curated by Jonathan Anderson | Source: Ingleby Gallery

Anderson has underwritten a clothbound catalogue, also titled Dreams of the Everyday, published by 5B. Essays by both artists and a conversation with Ingleby expand the exhibition’s themes and offer collectors a keepsake.

After its Orkney debut, the exhibition travels south: it runs at the Pier Arts Centre until 13 September 2025, then settles at the Holburne Museum in Bath from 3 October 2025 to 11 January 2026.

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Jonathan Anderson