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.
MY STORY
I like to contrast elements of tight, structured paint work with loose, atmospheric washes and gestural marks. Colour and texture are both dominant elements in my paintings. Expect to see a mixture of sweeping brush strokes, palette knife work, dripping paint, scratched back surfaces and washy pools of paint.
I respond intuitively to each of the landscapes that I have walked and seek to capture the elemental nature and energy of a place rather than to record a literal interpretation.
Like the patina of time, my work is multi-layered and built up and scraped back over time. This adds both depth and textural variety to my outcomes.
MY BACKGROUND
PGCE Secondary Art Education at Westminster College, University of Oxford.
BA (Hons) Fine Art at Manchester Metropolitan University.
As a secondary school art teacher, I work with some incredible young people who share my passion.
This helps me to keep my own work fresh and vibrant.
Martin works mostly in acrylics, sometimes watercolour or coloured pencil.
He wants to see art back where it belongs - part of the practice of deep observation: ‘If art (of any kind) became central to self-expression, then we would live very different lives.’
Louise is a landscape artist who studied Fine Art and Printmaking (BA) at West Surrey College of Art and Design during the early 1980’s.
Louise is a painter of landscapes. She works directly from the environment with inspiration coming from an emotional response to the dramatic effects of light evolving soft romantic moods and atmospheres.
She has exhibited in many sole and group exhibitions notably the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2011. She has won numerous prizes for her work and her pieces have been sold in the UK and Internationally for private and commercial collections.
Diana Pollock is a still life artist who studied Fine Art at Canterbury College of Art during the 1980s. She then moved to London and continued her interest in painting concepts and issues related to the domestic.
Her preferred medium recently has been pastels, building up layers to create sometimes, unexpected effects. She has developed a keen interest in the relationship with still life and the artist, believing that the interpretation of the subject matter is often consciously or not, autobiographical.
She has exhibited in many sole and group exhibitions in London and the South East.
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.
Mel's creations are influenced by nature, colour and light. She frequently tries new media and often combines them to get to the texture and emotion required. Combining iridescence and UV reactive properties to create several looks in one piece. Her artworks have found homes in far-flung places including Australia, the USA and Switzerland. Mel's home has been in Guildford for the past 10 years and she can often be found walking and photographing the local scenery.
I work in various mediums - oil, watercolour and pastels mostly. I'm interested in still life and landscapes.
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.
