My work sits between abstraction and figuration and is anchored in the landscapes which have inspired me in my homes and on our travels. I love vibrant colour, influenced certainly by living in India and Texas where the strong sun brings colour to life. I use colour expressively to capture a feeling or mood. In the same way my landscapes often include the suggestion of a house or home as a metaphor for feeling part of the landscape.
When working on a piece motivated by landscape or townscape Owen is not trying to reproduce a faithful representation of the subject. He is trying instead to make an image that attempts to present some aspect of the subject. This maybe the emotional atmosphere or mood he feels exists in a particular place. Alternatively the work might be concerned with the experience of looking, how perspective shifts within our visual field, how distance and closeness continually move.
The drawings he has exhibited in this exhibition have all been made within the last six months. The two large charcoal drawings “Flying” and ‘Daydream” were inspired by a stay in Polruan, a small village in Cornwall. The three smaller pencil drawings “Inside outside’ “In-between” and “St Martha’s” are based on views from or near his house in Guildford.
Shawn focuses mainly on drawing, but sometimes paints with oils, acrylic or watercolour, but the bulk of his practice is focused on original drawings. These are then photographed and manipulated, some of these digitally, to make new work, with the final giclée print process creating fine art prints.
His ‘Universally speaking’ series comprises ten original A3 graphite drawings on paper, and a collection of A3 and A2 prints.
All the work comes directly from his original hand drawn pieces
Themes/Style:
The themes in Shawn’s work are broad in scope, drawing inspiration from symbology, ancient history, mythology, religion and science.
His style blends architectural lines and geometries, with natural shapes and forms, creating intricate works of fine art.
Shawn Randall –
‘For me, symbols are a language, they transcend cultural barriers and allow me to communicate with a global audience. I like to think I produce aesthetically pleasing work, but there is always an undertone: a spikiness, a shadow or some awkward, organic form. Nothing is ever truly perfect, and I play with this tension’.
Shawn’s fine prints are handled by Otters Pool Studio www.otterspoolstudio.co.uk
Nicola’s etchings are based on pieces of metal and rust. These objects – corkscrews, drill bits, scissors, and secateurs – are old found in markets or have been given to her. Nicola’s wish to revive old tools and reveal their personality, her interest in the surface textures of the metal with its well weathered patina resulting from years of use and exposure to the weather. Her work is created by layers of etching, dry point and aquatint which are added to and scraped back to produce similar results to that found on these metal objects, and it is this that she seeks to reproduce and represent, reflecting where possible their history.
Georgina’s work looks at the intensity of the city and the overwhelming emotions that she experiences when she is there. She often goes into the City and draws whatever she observes on location and then goes back into the studio to put them altogether as a college. Like the Surrealists she is interested in how objects and people from completely different places come to together by coincidence at the same time. In the past she has carried out an illustration collage project entitled “London’s Extraordinary Neighbourhoods” where she started at different tube stations in London and drew whatever caught her eye that day.
Georgina also made work about the “Waterloo & City Line” at rush hour and how for some people it is normal to travel everyday in claustrophobic conditions that seem to her very abnormal. In her colleges she likes to give the viewer a sense of the images and sounds that we are bombarded with whilst navigating the City by using maps and grids. She uses modern technology such as Photoshop as well traditional techniques such as drawing and sewing, literally cutting, stitching and pasting images together.
“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time” Thomas Merton
Painting and drawing are central to my art practice and allows me to explore the space between fact and fiction. I’m interested in the possibilities of narrative, however suggestive, and in invoking atmosphere and emotion. The figure is also central in my work but it is rarely about the subjects themselves, rather a complex layering of emotion, experience and imaginings.
Whilst I am primarily a painter I love the immediacy and flexibility that can come from working in pencil and coloured pen. I have always been drawn to the back of a figures and I’m interest in how much can be conveyed through the way the figure inhabits the space of the painting or drawing.
The Paper Doll Series has developed over some time when I became interested in using flat pattern in contrast with the almost hyper-realism of the figure. The idea behind “Paper Dolls” stems from the childhood memories of occupying myself with cutting out paper dolls (and their outfits) that often featured in the Bunty and Judy annuals.
Cornwall, particularly the Cornish coast around Lands End and West Penwith, is her main source of inspiration. She works mostly using her own photographs and those of a photographer friend, and sometimes on location when she can.
She draws using charcoal and chalk pastels, adding colour and/or texture in gentle layers and removing with an eraser used as a drawing tool. Within these soft and subtle media she finds an infinite range of textures, tones and colours, to portray the light, movement and atmosphere she sees in her favourite places.
Her drawings are pieces of art in their own right, but also provide the inspiration and starting point for other materials such as glass and textiles.
Nancy has a BA (Hons) and a Diploma in Art and Design subjects, and a background of working in Design and then teaching Art and Design at GCSE and A level.
She is an artist and tutor, having created and run Artworks, her own independent art studio in West Sussex that provides a wide range of creative classes and workshops to adult learners of all ages and abilities.
