Visual Arts Forum
April 2007 Exhibition
The following artists all took part in the very successful 2007 Visual Arts Exhibition at the Stratford Civic Hall.
Heather Bailey
Heather’s landscapes are created from the shapes and textures which surround her, from the Cotswolds, to the West of Scotland and Tuscany. Her emerging style tends towards heavily textured Acrylics and Mixed Media. She gets very excited at the start of each new journey and tries to keep to a limited palette with semi-abstract shapes and vibrant colours.
Hilary Anderson-Barr
In producing her knitted vessels Hilary's intention has been to raise the perception of knitting as a craft - usually functional and domestic - by associating it with the art of the potter, whose skills have from ancient times been much appreciated. She is drawn to the quirky nature, variety and functions of African pots although, more recently, I have been referencing classical Greek vessels such as water pitchers. The use of yarns in their natural state echoes the basic materials of the potter.
Kate Barry
Inspired by light and the landscape Kate's work focuses on natural forms and elements. With a background in fine art and traditional black & white photography, she now captures images in digital format. Using the latest technology, she then produces 'giclee' prints on fine-art paper.
Julie de Bastion
Julie studied painting and printmaking in New York and returned to the UK in 1989. Her landscapes are beautiful, rich and full of life. The light generates space and the colours are simplified forms. Often painted from memory, the works are a homage to nature.
''When a work succeeds, it contains the intention and life force which created it. All coexists together, unified. It is the act of mark making, energy transformed in its pure state, and caught in a moment of time across a surface''.
Chris Bell
Chris enjoys making low temperature smoke or raku fired items, using a mixture of porcelain and Y material or raku clay. He also high fires stoneware pots. Most of his work is either made using slabs of clay or thrown on the wheel.
Mary Boddington
I get inspiration from organic things like seed heads and enjoy the fact that clay is 'of the earth'. I work in stoneware clay and enjoy textures and lines as much as colour. I mainly handbuild using slabbing, coiling and pinching methods and often finish with matt glazes or engobes and colouring oxides. The work is twice fired in and electric kiln to 9900C and then 12600C.
Mary Buckingham
Colour is Mary’s great love and she finds working with acrylics gives her the intensity of colour needed. She paints Still Life and Scenes, Groups of people doing things and flowers: trying to capture the aliveness and the colours working together. The activity of people just unfolds, sometimes from her sketchbook and often observed scenes retained in thought.
Bronwen Corrall - Ceramics
Bronwen’s current work of thrown and turned ceramics was inspired by the subtle colours and textures of an English winter. Her bowls, plates and vases combine soft shades with simple shapes, reminiscent of the 1960s Interest is added by the use of different clays and slips so that each item is unique within a unifying colour range.
Dorothy Cross
Dorothy is inspired by the beauty of flowers, trees and water in landscape. She works in watercolours, acrylics, pastel and charcoal. She was born in Coventry and now lives in Wellesbourne and has had years of study and involvement in art societies and exhibitions. She is a member of the Society of Women artists, the Society of Graphic Fine Art and the Society of Floral Painters.
Jasmine Eaton
My work involves textiles using screen-painting, hand & machine embroidery. Paint, found materials and objects. My inspiration comes from a variety of sources eg. A sentence or proverb such as ‘Home Sweet Home' I like to use interesting scraps of textiles and pieces of text in my work. Buildings inspire me if there are odd, unusual, or ornamental doors and windows.
Emma Falcke
My current range of bowls and vessels are thrown on the wheel using stoneware clays. The addition of oxides mixed into the clay create surface patterns which are revealed through the throwing process. My work has been influenced by Hans Coper and Lucie Rie.
Sean Feeney
Sean crafts elegant & graceful furniture in native hardwoods, creating award winning pieces of timeless contemporary design. His work shows a strong concern for the nature of materials, combining wood with metal, glass and leather.
Wendy Freeman B.A., A.T.D.
Wendy creates contemporary expressive mixed media paintings; each layer a veiled response to time and place. Frequent visits to the Cornish coast have embellished Wendy’s work with a buoyant use of colour; surfaces float or spill from the canvas.
Kim Ford
Working principally with Raku and smoke firing, Kim draws on urban and harbour environments as a catalyst. Tidemarks, road markings, walls, graffiti, tyremarks, wear, repair, erosion, addition whether purposeful or incidental all have an impact. He strives for visual and tactile qualities that will encourage handling, to create pots that are complete, individual, with character.
Nancy Frost
Nancy’s twin passions are clay and mixed media. With each, the possibilities are endless. The more you learn, the more the pathways open up before you. What could be more exciting?
Robin Furlong
Creating timeless furniture to sit happily in a multitude of settings, Robin blends traditional and contemporary techniques to superb effect. Flowing curves are the key signature of his contemporary bespoke furniture, which is handcrafted in a wide range of hardwoods. Set off with feature recessed handles, exquisite joint detailing and polished to a superb finish, each piece is designed to complement and enhance its setting.
Russell Gain
Russell’s work is abstract and expressionist, inspired by limitless possibilities of colour in nature and in art. He works in acrylic on paper or wood, which allows the use of some quite unconventional techniques to achieve the effects he seeks. Each painting develops its own direction as it progresses incrementally over a period of weeks or months.
Sally Greenway
I returned to painting fifteen years ago, however throughout my life I have studied History of Art and have a good knowledge of techniques and styles. Most of my work is in watercolour and landscapes as I paint for pleasure. I admit I am not experimental and I remain an amateur. However I have sold pictures at some local exhibitions.
John Hough
John paints in acrylic on canvas, abstract expressionist work inspired by movement and sound. He also hand-builds abstract vessel forms in stoneware.
Ros Ingram B.A. (Hons)
Ros creates quirky, humorous sculptures from brightly glazed ceramics and re-cycled found objects. She has exhibited throughout the UK and across Europe. Alongside her own work, Ros has built up extensive teaching experience, working with schools and community groups throughout Warwickshire and beyond.
Ruth Kerr
The choice of subjects for Ruth’s work has changed fairly rapidly from the usual watercolour landscapes in representative style to a more modern approach. She now works mainly in acrylics, enjoying being able to achieve watery watercolour effects but also by using a palette knife getting thick layers of pigment straight from the tube. She likes to allow a picture to emerge and try to end up with a semi-abstract painting, hoping this helps the viewer to make some sense of her pictures. She also enjoys very much using a variety of mixed media.
Usha Khosla - Ceramics
The inspiration for Usha’s work comes from the vitality and contrast of the landscapes of many countries, which she has visited. The vessels are hand-built and fired in an electric kiln to 1260°C. The textures of rough clay are emphasised by paining with slips, oxides and glazes. Many pieces are multi-fired with additional glazes applied for further textual quality.
Claire Kiernan
Claire’s current collection of work is cartoon in style and is inspired by her love of animation, bright colours and animals. Her preferred media is acrylics on canvas from which she sells reproductions.
John Lightbourne
I enjoy painting in manner of ways ranging from portraiture to abstraction and try to be influenced by a Matisse maxim that: ‘every painting should start out as an experiment'. I paint mainly in oils and produce about 200 paintings a year, many of which are experimental and have a low survival rate. My notable successes are paintings exhibited at the RBSA and the Royal West of England exhibitions. Though largely self-taught many weeks spent at the St Ives School of Painting was perhaps the most instructive and rewarding.
Paula Lingard
Paula combines her love of photography and art to produce appealing digital prints. A childhood spent in Barcelona encouraged an appreciation of colour and form in both landscape and architecture. Paula’s work appeals to the traditionalist as much as to the modernist and works are available in a variety of sizes.
Jayne Lucas
Jayne studied Fine Art in Chichester. In 1997, she became resident artist at Torquil Pottery where she continued to employ the textually appealing effect of rough torn paper in combination with clay. Wall pieces and vessels are made from recycled shredded paper and white stoneware. Inspiration is drawn from aerial landscape images, weathered surfaces and rock striations.
Susie Mendelsson
I am an expressionist figurative painter, inspired by German expessionism and medieval art, working in acrylic on paper. This image belongs to a project called 'She' of which there are 30 depictions of the face. 'Every day there is a different model in my studio. She is a figment of my imagination, she evolves and only then she becomes part of me'
Carey Moon
Carey Moon studied painting and ceramics at Leeds and Goldsmiths colleges and now teaches art part time, as well as creating her own work. Inspiration for painting comes from working in the landscape as well as from still life and she is influenced by such painters as Elizabeth Blackadder and Elaine Pamphilon. Her ceramic pieces are decorated with coloured slips and transparent glazes. The playful images used in decoration are of animals, fish or the human form.
Josephine Morgan
Josephine is a Chinese Brush Painting Artist, She has studied extensively in the UK and at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. She has also completed a further exclusive ink painting course at the Malaysian Institute of Art in Kuala Lumpar. Besides painting for exhibitions and commissions, Josephine gives demonstrations to clubs and Art Societies.
Barbara Perkins - Abstract
Barbara’s contemporary and abstract paintings are stimulated and influenced by her experiences in teaching primary aged children. Her own art fuses the children’s experimentation with her own. She uses a combination of watercolour, acrylic paint, fabrics, recyclable materials and employs a variety of techniques for applying the materials to paper to produce her vibrant paintings and collages.
Rod Perkins - Watercolours
Rod’s inspiration comes from the changing moods of nature and the texture and ‘hidden’ shapes found in natural forms such as tree bark and rocks. His emerging style varies from realism to abstract. He works in watercolour, acrylic and mixed media and enjoys experimenting with a variety of techniques and bases to add texture and interest to finished paintings.
Caroline Pratt
I work mainly using oil paint on canvas but also use ink, watercolour and other media. I like to capture the mood and poetry of nature in stormy skies, sunsets alive with colour and quiet misty landscape. My style of painting is fairley contemporary and I like to work outside whenever possible. I also find cityscapes interesting to work with. I am inspired by the relationships of colour.
Rachel Reader
A selection of limited edition colour and hand-printed black and white photographs of various subjects. My speciality is black and white portraiture, especially of children, but my work is of varied subjects including landscapes and natural forms.
Nicola Richards
Nicola’s pots are hand-built with layers of burnished coloured slips, the final decoration produced by a variety of resist and smoke fire techniques. A recent trip to Malawi working with potters and an admiration of traditional and contemporary smoke- fired pots are central to my way of working. Nicola teaches and lecturers. She accepts commissions and visits to her studio by appointment.
Meg Richardson
Meg makes artists books (small works of art in book format). Her books reflect her love of classifying things. She produces small editions of handmade books and also large numbered and signed editions of off-set litho printed books. Her work is in international collections including the Tate Britain Artists Book Collection. Meg teaches at the Oxford and Cherwell Valley College and the Publishing Training Centre, London. She also lectures at Oxford Brookes’ University, Oxford.
Helen Slater - Glass
Helen creates unique figurative kiln-formed glass pieces for gallery exhibition, both nationally and internationally, and in addition produces one-off sculptural pieces to public and private commission. Her inspiration is drawn from the figurative form and its perception within changing environments.
Mark Stammers
In the early days Mark was inspired by abstract expressionism and philosophy. Thus making, questioning, paintings, often inspired by the unusual poetic resonances found in the events and object of day to day living. He works with colour and light to make large or small abstract paintings relating to insights in philosophy and psychology.
Elizabeth Street
Her garden is Elizabeth’s main source of inspiration. Most of her paintings are completed in the garden, weather permitting, or the subjects picked and taken into the studio. Oils are her favourite medium, but she also works in watercolour, soft and oil pastels, pencils and acrylics. She uses her own flower photos during the winter months.
Julie Swinsco
Julie uses her paintings, prints and photography to depict a ‘slice of life', including the reflections of figures and often architecture in both a detailed and semi-abstract way.
Miranda Taylor
Self taught Artist with deep understanding of colour and form, inspired by Gaugin, Chagall, Bonnard, Christopher Wood and the Romantic mysticism of Samual Palmer and Stanley Spencer. The works on display are mostly Batik based, a complex textile dying medium to master, depicting naïve evocations of landscapes around the Cotswolds and favourite haunts in Scotland, Ireland and Cornwall.
Margaret Wade - Fabrics
After many years of painting I studied embroidery and the use of textiles. My recent work has been much influenced by the German artist, Emile Nolde. As a prisoner, under house arrest during Hitlers regime, he painted his 'unpainted pictures' in secret. These painting are the inspiration for my present work in fabric and threads.
Robin Wade - Clay Works
I find Clay fascinating in it’s diversity and adaptability. I explore it’s potential in a wide range of ways and do not feel constrained by conventional methods of working. Inspired by the visual impact of landscape , Stoneware and Porcelain Clays are used to reflect aspects of the environment and the momentary nature of time capturing moments in time, seasonally and emotionally.
Rachel Warren - Oils
I am inspired by photo-realist painters and strive for my oil paintings to look as realistic as possible. I like to closely crop my portraits to create interesting compositions or paint them much bigger than they would appear in real-life to challenge the way we see things. In my recent series of paintings of lights at night, I have been looking at the way the camera captures light trails that are invisible to the naked eye.
Prunella Webb
In her painting Prunella tries to capture the colour and feel of nature. Her deep love of colour influences every aspect of her life and has forged remembered images which evolve in her work.
