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We went over to Fen Ditton to see Laurence’s new paintings of bird nests that he has made since moving into a new studio at the old Fire Station in Saxmundham. Laurence told us that he had collected nests when he was tidying hedges and so on and when tidying up he realised that he had a collection of seven or eight of them. He became fascinated by them and decided that he wanted to study them, to closely examine them. the way that the nests are made in different ways by different species and how they reflect the environment by being made with different materials depending on their locale His sculpture was exploring constructions with wood and twigs and he didn’t want to construct nests as such. Apparently nests are one of the few things that humans cannot replicate in construction. So Laurence decided to make oil paintings for the first time since school. Every morning he would spend an hour making paintings from the nests and the show at Lynne Strover’s Gallery is the first public showing of them alongside Maggi Hambling in a show called ‘Exchange’. They are really nice paintings, they have are really interesting quality to them. They don’t seem to be at all worried about what they are doing.