A LOVE of art and music combine in the latest exhibition of paintings by Angie Spencer.

A painter and a violinist, with the Stroud Symphony Orchestra, Angie has created a collection entitled Passacaglia, which features a series of responses to Schubert and Shostakovich.

Passacaglia is currently showing at the Lansdown Gallery and will run until Sunday.

The image shown here is Angie’s response to the second movement of Schubert’s Death and the Maiden quartet.

“I listen to the piece I am responding to and allow a visual response to arise over some time,” she said.

“It is very intuitive and is based in my inner emotional response to music.

“I listen to the particular movement of the piece I’m working on, continuously on repeat, as I paint and allow the music to speak through me, changing colours and composition as I feel I want to. I get into a bit of a trance with it, becoming totally absorbed in the sound world of the composer.

“It can be an interesting process. For example, I had huge difficulty starting the paintings of Shostakovich’s 8th quartet, as I could only experience a feeling of deep failure, which completely stopped me in my tracks for weeks.

“The deadline was getting closer. Eventually I read up about what he was up to when he wrote it.

“He had been very despairing himself it seems, so that unlocked it for me and I could start, as the sense of failure was not actually mine at all, it was at the heart of the music,” she said.

“Each composer makes me paint quite differently too.

“Schubert has a completely different palette to Shostakovich, of course, and different brush strokes.”

Passacaglia also includes an oil painting, Severn from Rodborough, which Angie painted in response to a composition by Stroud Symphony Orchestra conductor, Jonathan Trim, Heart of the Five Valleys.

The painting is going to be auctioned to raise funds for the orchestra. Sealed bids are welcome.

Passacaglia is at the Lansdown Gallery until Sunday.

angiespencer.co.uk.