Susi started her printmaking obsession about 8 years ago and has now included experimenting with mixed media. Previously she had spent many years creating textile pieces. Pattern and texture feature a lot and she looks for these when she is out and about both in natural and man-made environments. She uses her camera to capture scenes that she finds compositionally interesting or natural forms with especially beautiful textures. She uses parts of these images as a base for her compositions – sketching until she has something she likes. Her work focuses on nature’s beauty, bleakness or quirkiness and humour – mixing layers of abstract and realism to tease out the final image.
She used lino to produce her first printed images and has been attending courses and creating her own pieces, since then using a mixture of processes such as relief (lino, woodcut and collagraph) and intaglio (monoprint and drypoint). She is fascinated by the way that using layers of colours on a plate can produce new colours and unexpected parts of the composition can become more interesting by overlaying. She never ceases to love the reveal as the paper comes away from the printed plate after it’s been rolled through a press – sometimes the piece exceeds expectations but not often enough!
Producing a printed piece combines different skills such as sketching, composing, using cutting or etching tools, preparing beautiful paper and choosing colours of ink which she finds completely absorbing and continually testing. Within the printmakers community she has found encouragement, a willingness to share advice and ideas and the feeling that it is a continual learning journey no matter how far you have already come. She has exhibited her work at the Ochre Print Studio Summer Exhibition and the Harvey Gallery as part of the Surrey Adult Education Summer Exhibition over the last couple of years.
Born and educated in the south of England, Kim has drawn and painted all her life. She was a teacher of art and design for thirty five years before moving in 2002 to Brittany where she lived and worked for twelve years. Her paintings have evolved from traditional landscapes to completely non figurative, abstract compositions combining tones, textures, lines and colours. Having painted almost exclusively in oils, Kim now works mainly in acrylics as collaging has become an important technique which she now employs to create texture.
“Charcoal is my favourite medium for drawing; it has profound depth and richness. I often make water colour sketches and take photographs out in the open and then rework the images back in the studio. Sketchbooks also serve to record observations, sensations and quotations. Sometimes I simply start from memory with glimpses that have unconsciously lodged themselves in my mind.”
Since November 2014 Kim has been living and working in Farnham Surrey. Her studio is open to visitors by appointment.
I was privileged to join Falmouth School of Art in 1986 as one of less than three hundred students, the last year before the government forced the process of amalgamation and expansion that culminated in the Falmouth University of today. Continuing on to study printmaking at Wimbledon School Art (now part of University of the Arts London), I received my MA in 1994.
Experiencing mysterious lethargy and anxiety problems, an art career did not materialise. I gained varied experience in a range of ancillary level jobs. Diagnosed with a severe mental illness in 2003 I was told I would need to take antipsychotic medication for the rest of my life. Redundancy from a sales assistant role in 2009 cemented my determination to take advantage of every opportunity to make art presented.
I found support at Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust arts therapies department, Creative Response, Richmond Fellowship – Art Matters, The Lightbox’s Landscapes of the Mind project, Ochre Print Studio and Outside In at Pallant House Gallery. I attended Outside In’s Step Up Workshop and Researching Collections programmes, later training to be an ambassador for the organisation (in 2022 all the Outside In ambassadors were awarded the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service in the late queen’s final New Year Honours).
Continuing fatigue problems resulted in my GP arranging tests, including the iron panel for possible anaemia. Instead of my iron being low, it was many times above the normal level. DNA testing confirmed Genetic Haemochromatosis in 2013. My iron level was returned to normal after the weekly removal of a unit of blood for a total of 22 weeks (2 bodies full!).
This June marks the second anniversary of my freedom from antipsychotic medication and the first from all psychiatric medication and treatment.
ART MATTERS!
I am a glass maker specialising in casting, skills I learnt during BA & MA courses at UCA in Farnham. I use textures from the environment to create sculptural work informed by nature and the layers beneath our feet.
Sue paints pictures of everyday folk. Taking a lighter look at life, capturing our warmth and humanity. The aim being that you’ll recognise something in the image, like it’s a reflection of someone you know, or a type of person – evoking a sense of the familiar.
The majority of her work is in oil, with just occasional forays into water-based media. In oils Sue starts by drawing with paint, the lines forming part of the finished piece. The same with water-based media, there is no initial drawing – rather Sue says she takes a deep breath and goes straight into the masses with a loaded brush. The focus being on the essence of the image, rather than the finer detail.
All the candid moments captured are of people Sue has seen whilst in her happy place – out and about with sketchbook and camera in hand.
Sue came to art later in life when an illness stopped her in her tracks – going to an Adult Ed Art Class was a way back to herself, and she was blessed with a brilliant mentor who helped her find her ‘thing’. Within two years she started exhibiting and selling.
In recent years she has been a finalist in the Holly Bush Emerging Woman Painter Prize 2018 & 2019, the winner of Creates Magazine Emerging Artist Award 2019, and in 2021 was a finalist in the Surrey Artist of the Year Award.
American documentary photographer Elliott Erwitt once stated “Photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place”, and this is very much true to Jon’s approach as he challenges himself to find the hidden beauty in scenes that would otherwise go unnoticed.
Jon has exhibited across the UK and had his work selected from over 16,000 entries to be included in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 2019, selling the piece during the pre-exhibition viewing. He is part of many artist collectives and is represented by the Punchbowl Gallery at art fairs across the country.
All work is for sale from his website.
My practice explores two key areas – the figure and the urban environment – and is influenced by my continuing interest in film and television. My key focus, through the medium of painting and photography, is how people interact with the contemporary environment.
I show urban life in dramatic colour and shade by using a highly contrasting palette to additionally emphasise shape and form. My historical reference is the Flaneur, a French term for an observer of city life. My work, as a modern day flaneur, takes me into the city where I take images on camera or phone, later to be refined and honed digitally in the studio before commencing painting on paper, board or canvas. An earlier solo show ‘Urban Narratives’ at the Hay Hill Gallery, London, further developed these themes while the subsequent online solo exhibition ‘The City Revealed’ continued these ideas with further new work. Both exhibitions can be currently viewed on the Hay Hill Gallery, London, website.
I have also widely exhibited in many juried group exhibitions including the Royal Watercolour Society, the Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize, the ING Discerning Eye Exhibition and the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours at the Mall Galleries, London.
Marilyn Taylor is a gold medal winner and International award winning freelance photographer. As a keen amateur, she is on the Royal Photographic Society Digital Group committee, and is an active member of two local camera clubs.
She has always been a keen photographer, from her teens, but when digital cameras became more available in 2000, she started to combine her photography with digital manipulation.
She prefers to take photographs of people and wildlife.
Ruth’s paintings in this exhibition exemplify what catches her eye: INTRINSIC PATTERNS, whether occurring naturally in the countryside, or created by architectural design.
Ruth enjoys working in a variety of media, notably acrylic, gouache, pastel, pen & ink. Over the years, her work gradually but insistently has evolved into the semi-abstract. She is especially rivetted by the strong and vivid patterns that emerge seemingly spontaneously in nature, but similarly inspired by architectural details on buildings. Reflections from, or views through, windows – often abruptly perceived in passing or waiting at bus stops – are another, related, focus. The challenge is to manipulate all that to a further level. Exaggeration and even distortion has fine aesthetic appeal. Some of the results are on display here.
Born and raised in New York, she came to Europe in 1965, ultimately settling in the UK, where she married and produced three children. The art world generally, and painting in particular, always has featured significantly in her life. Ruth has been painting seriously since childhood, and it has remained her main diversion from the strains of parenting and the pressures of working life through the years.
Her work has been exhibited individually, in group exhibitions at various sites in the Southeast and in Southern France, where we live part of the year.
