HFA

"HFA" stands for "Hadfield Fine Art", which was unknown to me till yesterday, when we tumbled upon its Autumn Exhibition.

We had been visiting Caroline's brother, to wish him a happy birthday (and to admire the work they have been doing on their house restoration). I vaguely knew that there was an art exhibition on nearby, so we sought it out: round and round the parish of Sevenhampton we drove - stopping to admire an incongruous paddock full of rheas (see photograph) as we went along Gassons - when eventually we came across the HFA sign only a door or two from where we had started.

The gallery was once a indoor swimming pool: it is big enough to show off well the work of 14 contemporary artists (potters as well as painters). The paintings are principally landscapes, still lives and abstract subjects, very varied. Caroline (the expert on this sort of thing) thought the work was of pretty uniformly high quality. And I agreed.

If you want to see the show, hurry: it finishes on 12th. Though the Gallery is open at other times, you need to ring for an appontment save during the exhibition at weekends between 10 and 5: see their website for details. (We arrived late in the evening, without an appointment, but we realised quickly that that wasn't really fair.)

Besides the high quality displays, it's worth visiting HFA just to see the view across the infant River Coln towards Brockhampton Quarry: one of the best in the Cotswolds.