A celebratory new exhibition of paintings by Terry Cripps entitled Sisters opens at The Stroud Subscription Rooms this week.

"After the success of the summer Open Studio exhibition 'Well Red' I wanted a wider and more significant audience for the showing of new work and approached the Subscription Rooms. This collection has been created with the George Room in mind.

"These paintings represent a renewed passion for simplicity and a confident approach to the materials. They celebrate the life of my sister Trudy Ambrose and our sibling spirit.

"Provoked by her illness and death from cancer, they attempt to explain what her suffering and pain did to our relationship as brother and sister. They are the journey I took to come to terms with the loss of my bright, joyous, younger sister.

"They deal with the raw edges that develop between people when they are at a loss to explain what is happening between them. There is nothing about them which is morbid or macabre."

The monochrome paintings use the naked linen surface and the bright white of gesso to convey passive aggression, using notions of growth, intrusion and loss as ideas for composition. As the paintings developed they became softer and more fanciful with lines that show a spirit and grace, even optimism.

The four large colour compositions are of memories that my sister and I have held as defining moments in our childhood, in most cases not observed by adults so remained quietly ours, a private possession.

Archery in the garden

Aged seven and three we're in the garden together, Trudy at a play desk reminiscent of school and I think she was pretending to be at school. I had just been bought a bow and arrow and impatient to play with, it told Trudy to get out of the garden. Why should she? It was her garden as well. Annoyed I let off an arrow at my equally new target (a cardboard box).

How I will never know, but that same arrow struck Trudy in the leg

with a resulting howl and the confiscation of the bow and arrow

Not-out

Boys love games and I was never very good at them until I was a teenager, but that didn't stop me trying.

I played cricket on the pocket-handkerchief of a green in front of the house with the Pollard boys, who were very good. Invariably out within two or three balls, most of my time was spent collecting the ball from Terry or Kevin's slogs across the road. Very irksome, so I would bribe Trudy with sweets or an unforefilled promise or two to do all the fetching for me.

Snowballs at noon

The late fifties saw a few hard winters in the midlands and with great delight, which stayed with Trudy all her life, we would play in the deep snow all day. Making vast barricades out of enormous snowballs (allow reduction for the exaggeration of time and youth) the rest of our friends and neighboughs would take up their respective positions and mayhem would ensue. Even though it was very cold, Trudy and I could never work out why when we were ushered in with the excuse that we must be cold we never felt it.

Two giraffes

Our fathers job took us to Kenya and whilst there he learnt to drive. A trip to the game park was in order and off we set in the family Ford Zepher Six. When you enter a game park you are told over and over again not to get out of you cars because these are wild animals.

That's fine if you don't break down. We got stuck up to our axel in a pothole whilst following giraffe. As suddenly as we stopped so did the giraffe who, with their long necks and Disney eyes stared at us with a look that said “that's you stuck then”.

After a great deal of talk and panic it was decided that dad and I would get out to see if we could move the car. To this day I am still in a daze how a eleven year old boy and his father lifted a very heavy car up to its axle in dust enough to get out of the hole. Whilst all this was going on my sister was staring out of the back window with a mixture of fear and appreciation.