History of the Gallery Mid 1980’s – 2009

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Organ & Eugene Fisk came to Wales in the mid 1980s. Together they created and ran the Kilvert Gallery of contemporary art at Ashbrook House – the former vicarage of the Victorian diarist Francis Kilvert – in Clyro, near Hay-on-Wye. The gallery became a work of art in itself as well as a residence and exhibition space.

The gallery as ‘home’ was presented as a template to inspire visitors to create what Lizzie defined as ‘The Art of Living’ in their own houses, for whilst she had ceased to paint pictures, she continued to design decorative and functional items and consult on interiors.

With the ground-floor and cellar rooms as galleries at weekends, and by arrangement on weekdays, the public spaces were full of carefully selected furniture, paintings and objects, most of them for sale. Lizzie also held solo shows for featured artists and several mixed exhibitions a year, often with a curated theme which not only created a sense of unity but provided her artists with a spring-board from which to investigate other areas of their practice.

“In the Kilvert gallery Lizzie showed highly-regarded artists such as David Inshaw, Alfred Stockham and Roger Cecil. She brought fresh attention to the illustrator Lettice Sandford, the sculptor Edward Folkard and the painter Rachel Windham. She gave first exhibitions to Sarah Thwaites and Clive Hicks-Jenkins among others, and while teaching at Hereford and St Martin’s schools of art she promoted the work of her students. Her discriminating eye took in the whimsical, the magical realist and the applied, while her adoration of animals was apparent in her championing of Robert Macdonald’s farmyard watercolours and Charles Shearer’s dark landscapes with ravens, gulls and horses.” Peter Wakelin July 2009