Congratulations to all our winning bidders! With your support and the support of our fantastic artists, we raised an amazing £12,994!!!
THANK YOU!
Although the auction is now finished, we created a Bonus Art Sale where you can purchase the remaining works.
On this page: list of 2024 Secret Art Auction Artists and Artists’ biographies
All artists generously contributing to the Secret Art Auction 2024:
Tracey Ann Allen; Peter Babb; Gemma Bailey; Alison Barker; Tony Barrell; Fran Batt; Ciara Bedingfield; Judith Bibby; Christine Bintcliffe; Caroline Borland; Anastasio Borodina; Nick Bridson Baker; Helen Alexander Bristow; Amy Brocklehurst; Tim Brookes; Tina Bullen; Lee Campbell; Rob and Nick Carter; Sophie Carter; Liz Chaderton; Eve Chan; Emma Clifford; Nigel Coates RA; Austin Cole RBA ARE; Gabriela Costache; Bridget Cousins; Joanna Crawford; Lucina Della Rocca; Sarah Gabrielle Dixon; Anna Dyson; Emmely Elgersma; Jo Ellis; Jenny Elvins; C. Evans; Susan Flockhart; Jayne Gale; Sangeeta Gardiner; Jahan Gerrard; Susan Gibbons; Gina Goodman; Shelly Goldsmith; Jill Goodchild; Liz Grammenos; Julija Greaves; Han Guo; Susie Hamilton; Andrew Pierre Hart; Maxine Hart; Imogen Hartridge; Rebecca Harvey; Kat Hassan; Helen Hayhoe; Louis Hellman; Melanie Honebone; Caroline Houchell; Graham F House; Fran Howard; Jo Hudson; Sarah Hutchinson; Vanessa Jackson RA; Stephen James; Chris Johns; Owen Jones; Carole Jones; Katherine Jones RA; Janette Kerr PPEWA HRSA; Alexandra Leadbeater; Geraldine Leal; Rhi Lee; Chris Lemon; Clare Mackie; David Mackintosh; Alex March; Sasa Marinkov; Alastair Marsh; Emma McClure; Claire McGineley; Graeme MxNay; Ian Mcnicol; Ernesto Montoya; Fiona Morris; Felicity Napier; Diana Nicholls; Lisa Omura; Julian Opie, Peggy O’Sheel; Les Palin; Dasha Palmer; Meg Palmer; Jem Panufnik; Tom Pearce; Margot Peters; Di Phelp Lister; Angus Plowman; Eva Plowman; Diana Poliak; Val Price Davies; Andrea Prince; Kate Proudman; Sarah Quayle; Claire Rice; Rosalie Ridsdale; Ian Ritchie CBE RA; Lisa Robinson; Mick Rooney RA; Cecilia Rouncefield; Zara Salazar de Dayle; Axel Scheffler; Luca Scholes; Elizabeth Sen; Chris Sercombe; Richard Sheldrake; Ian Shillaker; Ian Sidaway RI ASGFA; Gillie Spargo; Susan Spencer Hayter; Jan Stevens NAPA; Freya Stockford; Jill Storey; May Summers-Perkins; Paul Sunderland; Jill Temporal; Jenny Thompson; Lorraine Thorpe; Fiona J Timmins; Philippa Tunstill; Hannah Ulliott; Hakan Unul; Jane Wachman; Pam Wakefield; Kitty Wass; Jaqui Wells; Breda Whyte; Sue Wilkins; Alex Wilks; Chiara Williams; Helen Williams; Kipper Williams; Sioned Williams; Richard Wilson RA; Pauline Withers-Born, Levison Wood; Nicola Woods; Alison Wragg; Karen Youngs; Nicole Youngs; Soon Yul Kang;
THANK YOU!
Secret Art Auction 2024 Artists’ Biographies:
Ciara Bedingfield
Ciara has consistently created collages throughout her life. She likes to add and subtract various layers of paper and this approach allows her to revisit and rework ideas over several weeks or months. She first experimented with this medium as a student when exploring textile design at Middlesex University in London. She received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and subsequently collaborated with various community-based art organizations in the Bay Area. She uses collage to explore historical photographs and is particularly interested in the untold stories of women’s struggles throughout history.
Ciara is eager to find meaningful connections to her female relatives, Irish history, and the challenges women faced and continue to face. In the summer of 2024, her piece “Peggy’s Visit” was part of The Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition and was also exhibited at The Bedford Gallery, Walnut Creek, CA. Ciara lives and works in San Francisco but her heart is
in the UK.
Website: www.ciarabedingfield.smugmug.com
Instagram: @ciarabedingfield_art
*******************
Judith Bibby
Art Foundation year : Manchester Polytechnic
BA Fine Art : Central St Martins School of Art, London
Foundation Art Psychotherapy: Goldsmiths College London
MA Credits : Art Psychotherapy Roehampton University
*******************
Nick Bridson Baker
Nick has worked as a freelance cartoonist and humorous illustrator for over forty years. He now draws fewer cartoons and produces drawings, paintings and monotype prints.
His work falls into these categories:
On-the-spot drawings of places, people and events. Published in The Oldie and national newspapers. Nick has a large ‘on-the-spot’ archive, drawn for publication.
Drawings from memory and imagination.
Paintings also from memory, imagination and from drawings.
Monotype prints one-off prints in colour and black and white.
Cartoon drawings published in Punch, Private Eye, The Spectator, The Oldie, The Financial Times and national press and magazines.
Poetry: Nick has been writing poetry for over twenty years and has been published in various poetry magazines.
Website: www.nickbridsonbaker.co.uk
*******************
Tony Barrell
Tony is a widely published writer and editor who also works as an artist in an increasing range of media. He is based in Teddington.
Email: tonybarrell@msn.com.
*******************
Christine Bintcliffe
Christine is predominately a mixed media collage artist but also works with watercolours. In her work her main focus is music as she intuitively combines the rhythmic essence of songs and lyrics with the visual charm of collage as she weaves together fragments of images, colours, textures and marks.
Website: www.stardustacrylicart.com
*******************
Caroline Borland
Caroline has painted for as long as she can remember – it has always been her passion and she cannot imagine life without it.
Her work varies quite widely in subject matter, media choices and style and she takes inspiration from many sources, often from nature and her surroundings.
Caroline is intrigued by the forces and cycles of nature; the patterns, beauty and science of it all, and is fascinated by our interaction as humans with our world – both creative and destructive.
When she is not making art in one form or another, she can usually be found gardening, (spring/summer), or cooking and feeding folk, (autumn/winter). She also enjoys walking, although “dawdling” is probably a better description, as she constantly stops to look at the views all around, (or to examine and photograph or sketch the flora, fauna and other small-scale details of the path itself).
Caroline was born in Yorkshire and is still at heart a Yorkshire lass, but she counts myself extremely lucky to now live in Ayrshire on Scotland’s west coast where she finds a wealth of inspiration and from whence she can travel to such wonderful places as the Isle of Arran, wild glens & mountains, tranquil lochs or the bustle of Glasgow city within an hour. How lucky?!
Website: www.cborlandart.co.uk
*******************
Anastasia Borodina
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2023; NEAC 2022, 2021 & 2020; RP 2021 & 2019; Royal Miniature Society 2018; MA Hon. St.Petersburgs Academy of Arts, 2019.
Instagram: @_anastasia.borodina
*******************
Tina Bullen
Tina makes original artworks in oils and inks. Tina is something of a prolific artist, frequently exhibiting and working in her home county of Essex and further afield. She is a member of the Creative Practitioner Support Programme, Colchester Art Society and is an associate artist with Cuckoo Farm Studios.
Website: tina-bullen.sumupstore.com
*******************
Lee Campbell
A New Zealand-born painter based in Twickenham on Eel Pie Island for over 20 years who was invited to exhibit at the Florence Biennale 2009 resulting in invitations from international galleries. She has work in private collections worldwide and welcomes commissions.
Website: www.leecampbell.co.uk
*******************
Rob and Nick Carter
Rob and Nick Carter are a husband and wife artist duo who have been collaborating for over 20 years in London, England.
The Carters’ work examines the boundaries between the analogue and the digital using mediums including camera-less photography, painting, installation, neon, sculpture, and time-based media. The artists overarching goal is to harness new technology and reference historical processes that wouldn’t have been traditionally possible to previous artists.
In the last five years, Rob and Nick Carter resolved their curiosity using one profound tool: a robotic arm that they named Heidi. With AI and robotics, the artists taught Heidi, a six-axis Kuka Robot, to paint with exact precision. Heidi has since produced numerous series that mimic the works of old masters and artistic icons, as well as portraiture.
Their work is housed in the collections of The Mauritshuis, The Hague; The Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem; The Frick, Pittsburgh; The Victoria & Albert Museum, London; The David Roberts Foundation, London; The Städel Museum, Frankfurt; and The Fondation Custodia, Paris, as well as being the only living artists to show a work at the Frick Museum, New York.
Website: www.robandnick.com
*******************
Sophie Carter
Sophie works intuitively. When she paints there is no complete plan, she’s compelled to throw paint down, layer upon layer. The painting builds it’s essence in these layers and she watches for the moment it starts to reveal itself. This is the point when Sophie begins to make conscious decisions that lead to the final painting. It’s this unpredictability and freedom that drives her as an artist.
The main part of Sophie’s practice is about how paint behaves. There’s a certain amount of play and experimentation in all her work. Many of the techniques she uses she’s learnt to manipulate to get the results she wants, others are uncontrollable and she works with the outcome. Sophie builds layers of paint, rubbing back, washing off, letting each decision she makes lead to the next.
Sophie loves the freedom of painting this way, the spontaneity. Ultimately, she allows the initial layers of paint to guide her to the final outcome of the painting.
Website: www.sophiecarter.co.uk
*******************
Liz Chaderton
We often take the beauty of nature for granted and our sense of wonder dims a little. It’s easy to get tangled in daily life that we miss what is really important to us. Liz paints to capture a moment of awe and bring it to you in a joyful watercolour. She lives in a small village in Berkshire (UK), working mainly in watercolour and ink.
Website: www.lizchaderton.co.uk
info@chaderton.com
*******************
Nigel Coates RA
Coates is a polemical architectural designer and theoretician based in London. He was educated at the Architectural Association and has overlapped teaching, experiment and building throughout his career. Typically, he invests architecture with semiotics, craftsmanship and contemporary culture.
As a young tutor at the AA his extemporary approach led to the formation of the NATØ architecture collective which achieved wide-reaching influence through its magazine and exhibitions. His notoriety in the early 1980s led to success in Japan and to the formation of his practice Branson Coates. Numerous projects there include The Wall and the Art Silo in Tokyo. In the UK his buildings include the Hubs in Sheffield, Powerhouse:uk in Whitehall, the Museum of the Home in London and the Body Zone at the Millennium Dome, as well as numerous stores for Katharine Hamnett, Jasper Conran, Liberty and Jigsaw.
Coates is known for his dynamic freehand drawing style that puts the viewer at the heart of an idea. For him, the sketch carries the essence of a design. Alongside building design he has an ongoing interest in cities. He has exhibited numerous cityscapes made from found objects, such as his installation Mixtacity at Tate Modern. Other installations, including Ecstacity and Hypnerotosphere, featured in the Venice Architecture Biennale. Recent solo shows include David in Voxtacity at Betts Project.
In 1995 he entered the faculty of the Royal College of Art as Professor of Architecture, and in 2011 he was made Professor Emeritus. In 2012 he received the RIBA Annie Spink Award for Architectural Education, and in 2023 he was made an Honorary Fellow of the RIBA. Works are held by the Victoria & Albert Museum, FRAC in Orléans, the Tchoban Foundation in Berlin, and M+ in Hong Kong. His furniture and lighting designs are produced with leading Italian companies such as Fornasetti, Slamp, GTV and Poltronova. Books include Guide to Ecstacity, Narrative Architecture and his recent memoir – Lives in Architecture.
Website: www.nigelcoates.com
******************
Lucina S. Della Rocca
Lucina is a Full Member of the National Society of Painters, Sculptors and Print Makers. Her work has been sold to many private collectors in England and abroad.
Ms Della Rocca gained her Art degree from the Southern College of Art Southsea, then continued her training in sculpture at the Stroud School of Art and the Royal College of Art. Making her way to London in the late 1950s, she worked as a professional artist for Adele Rootstein Creations and Jean John Roger Creations, and started to get steady work in the burgeoning British film industry, building a good reputation as a scenic artist for ‘Oh, What a Lovely War’, and ‘Isadora Duncan.’ During the 1960s, she was taking commissions all over London, for a variety of clients such as Mary Quant, The General Trading Company, and various London restaurants and clubs, including theatrical productions. She also worked with Alan Jones, R.A., on his iconic furniture sculptures.
After a three-year stay in the USA, Ms Della Rocca returned to the UK with her daughter and began to feel the deep necessity for a more spiritual approach in her life. After searching for a couple of years, in 1975 she started meditating under the guidance of spiritual Master Sri Chimnoy. This spiritual awakening would influence her art in a profound way.
In 1979 she took a job teaching art to children at Kew College. During this time she continued to hone her art, painting not only her own creative works, but also taking on many commissions, including portraits of children, adults, and animals, and paintings of people’s homes. After a day at school teaching, she would work late into the night, usually until 2 or 3am. She retired after teaching at Kew for 25 years, and still took on some private students: older children for art college preparation, and adults.
She currently lives in London and is working full-time on various commissions: for sculpture, portraits and house drawings, as well as children’s book illustrations. She is planning a retrospective exhibition for 2021. She describes her style as eclectic, ranging from realism to spiritual or inter-dimensional. A large section of her work remains influenced by current events, especially those related to social and environmental justice and humanitarian causes. “Through my art I want to contribute, even in a small part, to social progress for the betterment of all beings”.
Ms Della Rocca has exhibited her work at The Royal Academy, The Royal West of England Academy, Courtaulds Institute, Llewellyn Alexander Gallery, The Mall Galleries, The Royal Portrait Society, The New English Art Club, Kingston Museum, and produced 9 successful one-person shows.
Published Works: Book illustrations, numerous music album cover designs.
Awards: Drawing prize: Hesketh Hubbard Art Society, Mall Gallery, Sculpture Award: National Society, Kingston Hill Art Gallery, Kensington Arts Council (first prize), Richmond Environmental Centre Award for Drawing.
Art Societies: Member of the National Society, Society of United Artists, Hesketh Hubbard, Society of Feline Artists.
Website: www.artlucina.com
*******************
Anna Dyson
Anna (b. 1965) is a British painter who lives and works in London and was educated in Fine Arts at Kingston College. Dyson reaches for unexpected colour as she works quickly and “intuitively” on multiple canvases at once, covering them in swirling, flowing, vibrating forms. Her pieces are vibrant, colourful, textured and are created using vegan friendly acrylic paints. She enjoys the conversations around the things people in her paintings see which are important to them.
Dyson’s neurodiversity is the touchstone of her practice, and her work carries with it the translation of her experience navigating a world wired for others. Dyson’s work foregrounds her experience living with ADHD and Autism while at the same time surrendering to the vibrant, electric intuitive condition her subconscious rests in. “I leave everything at the door and paint,” says Dyson.
Website: www.annadyson-intuitiveart.co.uk
Instagram: annadyson_intuitiveart
*******************
Susan Flockhart
Susan is a watercolour artist based in Twickenham, UK. She takes much of her inspiration from nature and loves to paint the weather. Susan’s style can be slightly whimsical and owes a lot to a childhood spent poring over illustrated children’s books, long past bedtime.
Website: www.susanflockhart.com
*******************
Jahan Gerrard
Jahan is a contemporary painter, was born in the USSR, and is now based in the UK. Her upbringing in an artistic family (father an artist, and mother a weaver) has shaped both her inspirations and her career. Having studied music first, she completed a music degree in Moscow, 1988. She started drawing and painting later, after moving to England, attended short courses on watercolour and oil painting, a summer course on drawing at Central St. Martins, followed by a degree in Illustration 2002-2006, at the University of Hertfordshire. She has been shortlisted for John Moores Painting Prize 2018, and she was selected for the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in 2022 and in 2023.
Website: www.jahangerrard.co.uk
*******************
Shelly Goldsmith
Shelly works across a range of textile practices to investigate the power of cloth as a rich landscape for expression, a place to explore and communicate ideas, unfold narratives. Through rigorously crafted tapestry weaving, hand stitch and experimental textile printing she unpicks established psychological theory to better understand human interactions, how we live our lives and what shapes us. Taking an autoethnographic approach her position is both personal and parsing, textiles become witness and memoranda, whilst also offering opportunities for introspection and learning.
Utilising technological and historical techniques simultaneously, her work is conceived and produced with sustainability at its heart, using recycled and repurposed materials. Creative practice is underpinned by collaborations with Psychiatry and Forensic Science professionals and supported by awards from Arts Council England and Wellcome Trust, for example.
Goldsmith has exhibited at major galleries and museums in Britain, Europe, USA and Japan, her work is in many notable public collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum and The Whitworth.
Goldsmith’s work is written about and cited extensively in books and journals. She is the recipient of several awards including the prestigious Jerwood Prize for Textiles and the Vlieseline Fine Art Textile Award, an international prize which recognises concept-driven and gallery context textiles.
Shelly Goldsmith is Emerita Reader in Textiles at the University for the Creative Arts.
Website: www.shellygoldsmith.com
*******************
Gina Goodman
Gina is an award-winning underwater photographer, diving instructor, and enthusiastic lecturer with a deep and genuine love for the marine environment. Gina has been shortlisted for four British Photography Awards for underwater work.
Gina’s journey into underwater photography began 18 years ago and has taken her across the Caribbean, Europe and Africa photographing a diverse array of marine habitats, from coral reefs and eagle rays to kelp forests and cuttlefish. These experiences have led her to focus on adapting equipment and techniques that do not typically form part of the underwater photographer’s toolkit, in the hopes of diversifying and expanding our creative opportunities and experimentation underwater.
Gina now takes great pride in serving as a lecturer on Marine and Natural History Photography where she is dedicated to advancing the world of underwater photography while encouraging students to add their own creative voices and innovation to the industry.
If you would like to buy prints or enquire about commercial work, please get in touch.
Website: www.ginagoodman.co.uk
*******************
Julija Greaves
Julija is a professional artist and Art Tutor working from Sheepbridge Studio in Mansfield Nottinghamshire and has years of experience as a Cruise Art Enrichment Instructor onboard major cruise ships worldwide.
Julija encourages and inspires artistic growth for beginners and improvers and offers great teaching techniques in multi media e.g.oils, acrylics watercolour and print.
She is a respected commissioned painter for unique and bespoke portraits, landscapes and surreal works.
Some of Julija’s original works are currently being exhibited in Sheepbridge Studio and can be found at collectors homes in UK and abroad. Her wire sculptures have been viewed in variety of exhibition Galleries, and her Commissioned wall murals can be found in public places, schools and residential nursing homes.
Website: www.julijagreavesartist.com
*******************
Han Guo
Han is trained at London Fine Art Studios with the Classical Atelier method. She enjoys the process of observing her subject and using the brush to capture her perception and understanding. Han believes that the key to build a connection with the subject is ‘see as it is’, which means to see the subject in its unfiltered reality, devoid of preconceptions. Han purses the authentic artistic expression by allowing her creative intuition to guide her. Motivated by the desire to share her profound thoughts and heartfelt emotions, Han endeavours to engage the audiences through the medium of her paintings.
Website: hanguo.co.uk
*******************
Susie Hamilton
Susie is an English artist who lives and works in London and is represented by Paul Stolper Gallery.
She studied painting at St Martins School of Art and Byam Shaw School of Art in London before reading English Literature at Birkbeck, University of London. She gained a PHd on metamorphosis of identity in Shakespearean drama in 1989 at Birkbeck.
Hamilton’s style has been called ‘iconoclastic’ since her painting is a process of making and unmaking. A member of the painting collective Contemporary British Painting, Hamilton works with Hospital Rooms Arts and Mental Health Charity, painting murals in psychiatric intensive care units, contributing work to their charity auctions and leading workshops online and in hospitals. In 2022 she completed 3 large paintings based on Chinese poetry for the central staircase of the new hospital in Tooting. In 2021 she painted a triptych for Askew psychiatric intensive care unit in Hammersmith, with a filmed interview by Ben Luke as part of the WHO programme, “Healing Arts: The Future is Unwritten”. In 2018, she made ‘Polar Light’, a large wall-painting for ‘The Junipers’ psychiatric unit in Exeter.
In 2020, she made a series of work showing doctors, nurses and patients facing Covid-19, some of which are now held by The Science Museum.
Her paintings are represented in Picturing People by Charlotte Mullins (Thames and Hudson, 2015) and ‘On Margate Sands: PaintIngs and Drawings based on Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’, 2018. Her paintings are held in public and private collections which include Murderme (the art collection of Damien Hirst), The Priseman Seabrook Collection, The Deutsche Bank Art Collection, The Economist, The Bernard Jacobson Collection, Gaucho Club, New Hall Art Collection University of Cambridge and The Methodist Modern Art Collection, London. In 2015 Hamilton was artist-in-residence at St. Paul’s Cathedral, London.
Hamilton has been called a “flâneur” since she observes from the sidelines, scrutinising tourists, shoppers, holidaymakers, diners, hen nights and other scenes of leisure. She has to work extremely quickly to catch particular movements and poses and this means that her figures are compressed, abbreviated and simplified and usually morph into something misshapen and grotesque. Of her work Hamilton has said “I often wanted to paint joy (as well as its opposite).
Website: www.susiehamilton.co.uk
*******************
Maxine Hart
Maxine captures the natural landscape, inspired by the spirit of the Cornish land and sea. Abstract in form, Maxine’s work captures an honest portrayal of the Cornish scenery – exposing her raw expressions of the ever-changing land through colour, energy and form. Her work is emotionally charged, combining her extensive drawing and painting techniques with various mediums to form rhythmic movements of lines, colour and texture.
Maxine’s daily walks are the starting point to her work, immersed in the natural environment, making sketches and taking photos to inform paintings once in the studio. Combining drawing qualities in her paintings and working on a number of images at the same time, responding and informing the other; layering, scratching, mixing mediums and moving the image on from its own starting point and being directed purely by the painting process, seeking the balance . Plein Air painting is becoming a necessity in Maxine’s practise allowing her an extensive natural studio space working and connecting with the unpredictable elements that surround her.
Maxine was born on the Wirral, Cheshire in 1971 and moved to Cornwall in 2008. She completed her BA Honours Degree in Fine Art at Birmingham Art School, Margaret Street, subsequently working as a mural artist and as a gallery officer for Cheshire Art Advisory Service. Exhibitions in London Art Fairs, RA Summer Exhibition, Cornwall galleries and private collections in America, New Zealand, Australia and Europe.
Website: www.maxinehart.co.uk
Instagram: @maxinehartpaintings
*******************
Kat Hassan
Kat (born 1985, London) is an artist known for her experimental image making and vibrant use of colour. Combining printmaking, collage and drawing from life, her spirited linework is central to her practice. A graduate of Central Saint Martins and Camberwell College of Arts, she explores beauty, joie de vivre, and the paradox of ephemerality versus the eternal.
Website: www.kathassan.com
*******************
Louis Hellman
Louis has been publishing cartoons since 1967, known as “the summer of love”, initially in architecture and planning magazines such as the Architect’s Journal, the Architectural Review, Building Design and then in more general publications, including national newspapers and magazines.
Originally from Islington in London, he studied architecture at UCL and the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris. He has exhibited in Barcelona, Sir John Soane’s Museum London,The Royal Academy, the NEC BIrmingham, the Architectural Association, the RIBA and elsewhere. He has lectured extensively in the UK, Australia and the USA. He received an MBE for services to designing for disabled people, and an Honorary Doctorate from Oxford Brookes University. He has published five books on cartoons and architecture.
Website: www.louishellman.co.uk
*******************
Melanie Honebone
Melanie is a Wales-based fine artist. She often works in series; constantly shifting between deconstruction and reconstruction of uncanny 3D forms in an anarchistic melding of artistic disciplines.
As the work evolves, photographs and drawings of her fantastical creations eventually become more important than the sculptural works themselves. The materials of which are inevitably broken down and reused to form the next in the series.
*******************
Fran Howard
Fran was born in Sussex in 1935 but lived much of the time in South Africa from 1946 to 1973. He now lives in London. He worked in finance in mining and industry in South Africa, the United States and the United Kingdom until 1987 and consulted until retiring in 2001. Since 1990 he has been involved in community health development in Eastern and Southern Africa and he visits these regions regularly.
Fran Howard took up painting in watercolour in 1991 and spends an increasing amount of his time painting in the field. For a time he was tutored by the late Charles Longbotham RWS. He finds his subjects in England, Provence, Kenya and South Africa, and other places he visits on holiday. He particularly enjoys landscapes, coastal scenes and seascapes. He has exhibited at charity “Art for Africa” exhibitions in London in the late 1990’s, at St Judes Gallery in Somerset in 2002/3, in London, including the Chelsea Art Society’s annual exhibitions and at private exhibitions. He is a member of the Chelsea Art Society.
Website: www.franhoward.org.uk
*******************
Jo Hudson
I live and work in Somerset and have been making collage for around 4.5 years.
My work has been included in a couple of collage publications and a piece was chosen by the prestigious Kanyer Art Collection for inclusion in their permanent collection in the USA.
I have sold work to buyers both in the UK and internationally.
You can find me on Instagram @jo_collage.
*******************
Vanessa Jackson RA
Vanessa Jackson, on first reading, appears to take the most formal approach to painting, but her use of geometry and its three dimensional function deny the supposed flatness of modernist space. Jackson’s work explores the contradiction of a fully realised space at once pertaining to logic and completeness and uncertainty and unease. The ornamental and optical play of colour acts to both confirm and confuse our sense of perception, constantly shifting between concrete presence and the ambiguity of space beyond our grasp.
Jackson destabilises the very ‘ground’ we most desire, a sense of security and belonging.
Website: www.vanessajackson.co.uk
*******************
Katherine Jones RA
Katherine Jones’ artistic practice is underpinned by drawing and painting, and concluded in multi-layered painterly prints which bring together disparate narratives in hyper-real or folkloric spaces. Perceptions of safety and danger are often described using archetypal motifs such as a house, flower, sun or tree.
After a BA at Cambridge School of Art she completed her MA at Camberwell College of Art in 2003 and is currently a lecturer in Fine Art Printmaking at Middlesex University as well as a visiting lecturer at universities and colleges across the UK. She has been the recipient of numerous awards for her work and has undertaken major residencies including Eton College, Winchester College, Rabley Drawing Centre UK and Kloster Bentlager in Germany.
Jones lives and works in Brixton, South London. Her work is included in international collections including The Victoria and Albert Museum; The House of Lords; Winchester College; Ashmolean Museum; University of Chichester; Royal West of England Academy, Pallant House Gallery UK and Lafayette College, Boston Athenaeum, Wellesley Library, Swarthmore College and Yale University in the US. She is currently working on multiple projects including a commission for Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
Website: katherine-jones.co.uk
*******************
Janette Kerr PPEWA HRSA
Janette is a painter deeply embedded in place, working at the interface between land, sea and historical experience. She writes, ‘My paintings represent immediate responses to sound and silences within the landscape around me; they are about movement and the rhythms of sea and wind, swelling and breaking waves, the merging of spray with air, advancing rain and mist, glancing sunlight – elements that seem to be about something intangible.’
Called ‘the best painter of the sea in these islands’ by Brian Fallon, Chief Critic of the Irish Times, Kerr delights in foul weather. Drawn to the perimeters of land, her work is an index of edges and ledges, exposed headlands and wind-swept seas. She writes: ‘My process of making paintings involves extremes and instabilities: peripheries and promontories – places of rapid change and shifts, both physically and meteorologically’.
Kerr is not somebody who makes meticulous studies of landscape. Beyond mere topography, but with a nod towards the Northern Romantic tradition in landscape painting, her practice remains contemporary and experimental. For the last 12 years, her work has focussed on Shetland, where she has a studio and house on the west side, close to the sea.
She travels extensively – always to wild sea and weather-scoured places that look northwards. Working alongside Norwegian oceanographers at the Meteorological Institute in Bergen in 2015, studying the unpredictability of waves and wind, had a profound influence on her work. In 2016 she sailed along the coast of Svalbard in the High Arctic on board a tall ship called the Antigua with a group of international artists. During 2020 she walked in snow storms on an international residency in Skagastrond, NW Iceland.
Kerr has a strong track record of initiating/working collaboratively, in 2017 working with film and sound artist Jo Millett and sound artist Rob Gawthrop to develop Confusing Shadow with Substance, a film and sound installation based on an 18th century haaf fishing station in Shetland, which toured during 2021/22. During covid, they set up the Stenness Sound Walk using GPS technology on the beach at Stenness, Northmavine, in collaboration with the art collective, Satsymph (see also a review by Alastair Hamilton: sound walk technology ).
More recently, in 2022, she received funding from Creative Scotland which enabled her to spend 2 months in Greenland, living in a remote settlement called Oqaatsut, and to initiate a solargraphic community project linking Shetland and Greenland through images and field recordings.
Kerr has a PhD in Fine Art, is an Hon Royal Scottish Academician, RWA Academician, and Past President of the Royal West of England Academy of Art.
Exhibiting regularly across the UK and abroad, her work is held in national and international collections.
Website: www.janettekerr.co.uk
Instagram: @ janettekerrstudio
*******************
Alexandra Leadbeater
Alexandra’s work is inspired by the sea from the frothy sea’s edge to the distant horizon. The nearest wave as it crashes or simply washes on the shore is an endless fascination as colour and form exist in a unique moment and Alexandra’s aim is to capture the energy and feeling of being in a wave rather than depicting the sea in paint.
Alexandra is increasingly concerned about the plight of the ocean and is currently working on themes relating to plastic pollution and climate change.
She also makes paintings of still life objects, often a simple domestic item such as a rusty enamel jug. Life-size with no narrative context, the layered paint and distressed surfaces suggest its use over a period of time.
After a Foundation Course at Bath Academy of Art in Corsham Alexandra gained a BA(Hons) in Fine Art at Preston Polytechnic when it was at the Storey Institute in Lancaster.
Her first exhibition was a sell-out, selected by Adrian Henri for the Serpentine Summer Show in 1981.
Alexandra continues to show in various galleries and non gallery spaces and has work in several private and corporate collections.
She teaches small classes and welcomes visitors to her studio in St Leonards on Sea, East Sussex
Website: www.alexleadbeater.com
*******************
Geraldine Leal
Geraldine lives and works in Arundel, West Sussex
BA (Hons) Fine Art: Sculpture, Northbrook College, 2007
My artwork is concerned with materialism, climate change and the human destruction of our planet. It’s often set in a dystopian world.
Website: www.geraldineleal.artweb.com
*******************
Clare Mackie
Clare is a highly accomplished and well established illustrator who lives in the Scottish countryside, after 30 years carving a successful career in London.
Her clients have been many and varied including Harvey Nichols, Tatler, Chanel, Trish McEvoy, The New Yorker, Country Life, Good Housekeeping, IBM and BBC to name but a few. She has illustrated over 20 books and was shortlisted for the Greenaway Award for her collaboration with Michael Rosen on his Book of Nonsense. Her portfolio also includes illustrations for adverts, greeting cards, magazines, kitchenware and stationery.
Website: www.claremackie.co.uk
*******************
David Mackintosh
David designs books and other objects, but he mostly enjoys making things and having them printed. David has worked widely in book publishing as a designer and art director, collaborating with authors, illustrators and photographers. He writes and illustrates his own picture books, and illustrate other texts too. David’s picture books are published in the UK and Europe by HarperCollins, PenguinRandomhouse, and in the US by Abrams.
Website: www.profuselyillustrated.com
*******************
Alex March
Alex is a multidisciplinary artist based near London, but originally from Northumbria.
She makes work based around found images. Alex is particularly interested in historical sources which repeat tropes. She uses collage, film, painting, drawing and installation to collect and skew visual imagery as it reinforces patriarchal or hierarchal norms. Alex is interested in visual imagery as conditioning.
Alex has questioned the passive voice of Mrs De Winter in a short film based on excerpts of the casting process from Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca, conducted an epistolary postcard love affair via the medium of collage and Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse, and produced a hand drawn Toile du Jouy wallpaper of Hollywood Golden age clinches in the wake of Me Too. Alex has produced a small pantheon of Little Gods by taking a sharpie to the Madonna and Child throughout the National Gallery’s collection (again via postcard) and investigated hollywood goddesses through collage. Recent projects include an investigation of academic drawing practice, paintings which draw on the artists model and muse, and a collage a day for 2022 in which she bates Instagram to ban classical nipples.
Current themes include the artist nude, the muse, the goddess, and her own gaze.
Website: www.alexmarch.com
*******************
Sasa Marinkov
Sasa’s preferred method of making images is through Relief Printmaking using wood or lino. She likes exploring an expressive language in a dialogue between between positive and negative (most often printing in black ink on white paper), representation and abstraction, control and accident. Sasa searches for subjects with a camera or draws, sometimes using nature symbolically or a city in construction or destruction. Exploring ideas and teaching a variety of skills have been an important and absorbing part of Sasa’s creative life.
Website: www.sasamarinkov.co.uk
*******************
Alastair Marsh
Alastair is an award winning photographer based in North Yorkshire. His photos have been featured across a range of competitions and publications, including category winner of the British Photography Awards in 2020, featured in the British Wildlife Photography Awards, Bird Photographer of the Year, Zoological Society of London (both category winner and highly commended in 2016), Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards, Africa Geographic, Wildlife Trust, and the Woodland Trust.
The main reason Alastair enjoys photography so much is the way it has encouraged him to learn so much more about the natural world, its geography and the wildlife we share it with. He has learnt how rewarding it is to stop and appreciate things we’re often too busy to notice.
Website: www.alastairmarsh.co.uk
*******************
Diana Nicholls
Diana is a self-taught artist with a deep passion for abstract art and a firm belief that everything happens for a reason. Her artwork serves as a soul-searching journey, a way to express her emotions, thoughts, dreams, joy, or fears—her way to escape and feel free.
Diana enjoys working on large canvases, with a preference for acrylic mediums, and also loves drawing on white or black paper using black ink or metallic pens. Since 2015, she has been a member of the Art & Soul group, with her artworks exhibited in various local exhibitions.
Since September 2016, Diana has donated artworks annually to “The Secret Art Sale.”
Instagram: www.instagram.com/diananichollsart
*******************
Lisa Omura
Lisa is an originator of Presscratching, a method of creating works of art by pressing and scratching paper, and songwriter based in London.
Her art is about love that gives us energy and death – not as a negative force but as part of the cycle of life.
She believes everything in the world is a continuous rearrangement of elementary particles that gather together in living organisms and, after death, mix with others to reshape themselves for eternity.
This is reflected in her art, made by countless dots slowly coming together while she’s drawing, as if they had their own consciousness.
Instagram: ＠lisa__omura
*******************
Julian Opie
Julian was born in 1958 in London and graduated in 1983 from Goldsmiths School of Art, where he was taught by Michael Craig-Martin. He lives and works in London.
Opie has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally, with major museum exhibitions including shows at Kunstverein in Cologne; Hayward Gallery and ICA in London; Lehnbachhaus in Munich; K21 in Dusseldorf; MAK in Vienna; Mito Tower in Japan; CAC in Malaga and IVAM in Valencia; MoCAK in Krakow; Tidehalle in Helsinki and Fosun Foundation in Shanghai; Suwon IPark Museum of Art in Korea, as well as the Delhi Triennial, Venice Biennial and Documenta.
He is represented by 12 galleries worldwide and has presented many public projects in cities around the world, notably in the Dentsu Building in Tokyo 2002; City Hall Park in New York 2004, Mori Building, Omotesando Hill in Japan 2006; River Vltava in Prague 2007; Phoenix Art Museum USA 2007; Dublin City Gallery in Ireland 2008; Seoul Square in South Korea 2009; Regent’s Place in London 2011; SMETS in Belgium 2011; Calgary, Canada 2012; The Lindo Wing, St Mary’s Hospital, London 2012; and more recently permanent installations at PKZ in Zurich, Arendt and Medernach in Luxembourg; Taipei, Taiwan; Tower 535, Causeway Bay in Hong Kong; and WTC in Lisbon.
Opie’s works can be found in many public art collections, including Tate, British Museum, Victoria & Albert, Arts Council, British Council and National Portrait Gallery in London, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, ICA in Boston USA, Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh USA, Essl Collection in Vienna, IVAM in Spain, Berardo Collection Museum in Lisbon, The Israel Museum in Jerusalem and Takamatsu City Museum of Art in Japan.
Website: www.julianopie.com
*******************
Les Palin
Born to British parents in India in 1926 he went to England in 1945. In 1956 he enrolled to The Sir John Cass College, where he studied art part-time until 1966.
In 1972 one of his paintings was accepted and hung at The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition; subsequently more of his paintings were accepted to this exhibition.
In 1981 he joined The Saint Albans Art School, where he studied Sculpture and Art for three years. Βetween 1987-1991 he studied Art at the University of Middlesex, where he won twice The Ian Fraser drawing prize. Subsequently he exhibited with considerable success at International Art Consultants , Dockstreet Gallery, and the Llewellyn Lloyd Gallery in Waterloo.
Les Palin’s art is influenced by important Western European painters and sculptors: His watercolours by Turner, Cezanne and Nolde; his oils by Vlamnick, Derain and the German Expressionists; his sculpture by Praxiteles, Phidias and Polycletus.
Les is also a consummate water colourist. His colours – bright, vivid and joyous, evoke the atmosphere and environment of the place, whether it is Cyprus or any other country.
The artist resides in both England and Cyprus and hopes to live in Cyprus for longer periods of time as he is drawn to the light, the warm colours, the landscape, and the generous hospitality of its people.
*******************
Andrew Pierre-Hart
Andrew’s practice is inter-disciplinary based in painting, the main focus of his work is the symbiotic relationship between sound and painting, his practice an ongoing rhythmic research and play of improvised and spontaneous generative processes, through various mediums: Sound, Video, Performance, Found object and Image, Language, Photography and Installation.
By proposing Painting and Sound, through the notion of cross-modality , reconstructing languages, and idea generation, Andrew’s practice responds ad infinitum: an improvisation of improvisation . All of this is translated through the action of play and experimentation ; a new wave expanded painting.
Themes : Improvisation, Collective memory, Cross-modality, ,, Musicality and Rhythmology
Website: www.andrewpierrehart.com
*******************
Diana Poliak BA (Hons) Fine Art – University of Greenwich.
Diana’s paintings, prints, pottery and poems are usually inspired by flora and fauna. Her work has been selected and sold at The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in London in 2013, 2016 and 2018.
Website: www.athyrium-atelier.co.uk
*******************
Kate Proudman
Kate is an architect and artist, studying Architecture at Bristol and Edinburgh Universities, and then Fine Art at London Met. Her work ranges from
collaborative installations to sound pieces, painting and photography. Recent exhibitions include a 2-person show, Beyond Reason and a group show, A Patch of
Sky at One Paved Court, Lockdown Letters to Horace, at Strawberry Hill House, and a solo show at the Fairfax Gallery, Oxford University Press.
Kate lives and works in London. In 2017 she co-founded One Paved Court, an artist-led contemporary art gallery & studio where artists are given the freedom to exhibit a
diverse range of projects.
Website: kateproudman.co.uk
*******************
Ian Ritchie CBE RA
Ian Ritchie, CBE RA, is a renowned British architect, artist and author. His work is influenced by subjects ranging from technology and physics to social concerns, history, landscape and neuroscience. He was elected as a member of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1998.
Website: www.ritchie.studio
*******************
Lisa Robinson
Lisa’s work reconfigures and transforms the habitats she occupies, appropriating and translating these spaces into paint. A metamorphism takes place, changing the source material from recognisable forms into something less nameable. The interior, urban spaces, film and architectural details are often used as starting points. The paintings develop by responding to each mark made with the end result being unpredictable. The work remains untitled, to allow the viewer to freely translate the relationship of the forms and gestures.
Lisa studied at Manchester School of Art and has completed a year on the Turps Correspondence Course. Her work has been exhibited nationally and has been shortlisted for the New Lights Art Prize, ING Discerning Eye Prize and she was a recipient of The Joan Day Painting Bursary.
Lisa currently works in Studio B7, Westgate Studios, Wakefield. The studios are open to the public as part of the Wakefield Artwalk. “Since launching in 2008, Artwalk has offered Wakefield’s creative community opportunities to exhibit their work, meet, and sell to a growing number of visitors. A bi-monthly evening of art, performance, music, heritage and socialising, the events are hosted across a variety of independent venues in Wakefield City Centre.”
Website: www.lisavrobinson.co.uk
*******************
Mick Rooney RA
Mick Rooney studied at Sutton School of Art from 1959 to 1962, Wimbledon School of Art from 1962 to 1964, and subsequently at the Royal College of Art, London from 1964 to 1967. Here he was awarded the Austin Abbey Major Scholarship to study at the British School of Rome from 1967 to 1968, where he was commissioned by the Franciscan Order to create a wall mosaic for a new Basilica in Nazareth, Israel. Between 1968 and 1982 he taught part-time at various art colleges.
Rooney’s early solo exhibitions were held from 1965 at the Fulham Gallery, London, Galerie Petit, Amsterdam, Seasons Gallery, The Hague and Patrick Seale Gallery, London, with regular solo shows being held at the Mercury Gallery, London from 1984. A retrospective of his work (covering the period 1978 to 1988) was held in 1989 and toured Folkestone, Eastbourne and Bath. Rooney’s work has been included in many group exhibitions in Britain and abroad. Among Rooney’s commissions is a painting to celebrate the centenary of the Financial Times (1988), a poster for London Underground (1990), a tapestry commissioned by TSB for Birmingham Headquarters (woven by Edinburgh Tapestry Company) and a book cover for Mr and Mrs Noah – recent poems by Brendan Kennely.
Among Rooney’s many awards are ANSVAR Insurance, Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne (1981), World of Newspapers, Daily Mirror, London (1982), Spirit of London, GLC Southbank (1983), Gulbenkian Printmakers Award (1984), John Player Portrait Award, National Portrait Gallery (1985), Daler/Rowney Prize (Royal Academy, 1986), House and Garden Magazine Award (Royal Academy, 1988), Korn/Ferry International Premier Award (Royal Academy, 1989) and First Prize, Chichester Arts Festival Exhibition.
Rooney was Artist in Residence for the Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne in 1983. He was elected Royal Academician in 1991 and in 2001 was elected to the Royal Society of Painters and Printmakers. Rooney lives and works in London.
*******************
Cecilia Rouncefield
Website: ceciliarouncefield.artweb.com
*******************
Axel Scheffler
Axel is an award-winning, internationally-acclaimed illustrator of some of the most well-loved children’s books. His books have been published in many languages and his work has been exhibited all around the world. He is a Patron of Habitats & Heritage and has greatly supported environmental and other organisations around his Richmond home. He is well known for his illustrations of children’s books, including The Gruffalo, written by Julia Donaldson. He has also authored and illustrated the Pip and Posy series of books for children.
Website: axelscheffler.com
*******************
Chris Sercombe
Website: www.chrissercombe.com
*******************
Richard Sheldrake
Richard is a photographer based in Dorset, UK, and focuses on the natural world, through wildlife, landscapes, travel and portraits.
He loves the process of producing prints from his work, so do all of his own printing, using a Canon ProGRAF-1000 and primarily high quality papers from Permajet.
By education he is an Aeronautical Engineer, so he also has a passion for aviation and aviation photography.
Richard has been taking photographs for many decades, after having his first SLR camera, a Praktica LTL3, in the 1970s. He made a leap to Nikon cameras (long a dream for him) in the 1990s and has shot on Nikon ever since.
Website: www.richardsheldrakephotography.co.uk
*******************
Ian Sidaway RI ASGFA
Born in 1951 in Tamworth Staffordshire into a family of miners and clay workers. Ian studied graphic design and went on to work for a short time in advertising. He began to paint in the early 1970s and worked as a carpenter, builder and gardener in order to generate a living. Throughout the 1980s and 90s he painted portraits to commission and began to illustrate books on art technique. He went on to write and produce his own books, with 32 titles written to date. There have been many contributions to various magazines on art technique and consultancy work on several art part works. For several years he taught at summer painting workshops near Arezzo in Italy. Of late work concentrates on the landscape in the UK and abroad. Water colour is the medium that he now favors and in 2010 he was elected a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours.
Website: www.iansidaway.co.uk
*******************
Jan Stevens NAPA
Jan is a contemporary abstract artist and member of National Acrylic Painters Association. She has paintings in private collections in London and Europe.
Jan has been selected to exhibit at Royal Watercolour Society Open at Bankside Gallery, NAPA Summer Shows at Wells, Chichester and St Ives, Water Street Gallery Todmorden, Orleans Gallery.
Jan in Conversation:
‘I am inspired by wildlife and nature’s water and green habitats which influences my art. Cornish raised, state-degree-educated, global business wise and South West London living all fuse to celebrate my creativity. I am grateful to my quality-loving creative mother and fun engineering father for their support in all my endeavours. As I continue enjoying my life, I find painting gives me a ‘freedom’ to be me. Seeing my art on the wall, makes me smile and I remember the surprises along the way as the painting evolved.
My abstract art is fluid like water. I prefer acrylic paints for their range of consistency. I love mixing the paint on the paper, applying water first then adding the paint. It requires especially thick paper so I use St Cuthbert’s Mill watercolour paper 638gms. Enjoy.
Website: www.janstevensart.com
Email: jan@janstevensart.com
Social media sites: @janstevensart
*******************
Freya Stockford
Freya’s work is about composition, colour, and context. She paints enduring, alongside fleeting, objects in her work to commemorate complex emotions that illustrate her life. The visual mood of the painting depends entirely on the context. Whether it’s as simple as celebrating a midnight snack or memorialising radiant joy, Freya uses the quiet form of still life to portray the full gamete of life. Freya believes that colour begets memory and hopes the colours in these works instil some retrospection in the viewer. Freya often paints what she calls ‘ugly paintings’ where she creates compositions and uses colours that challenge her to confront difficult emotions.
Freya is an artist based in Leeds, UK. She graduated from Central St Martins in 2010 and continued her degree in Painting and Printmaking at Glasgow School of Art. After losing her work in the fire at GSA in 2014, she has continued her practice from her studio at Assembly House, Leeds. Freya has exhibited internationally, including shows in Germany and the USA. Some of her favourite things are: wild swimming, striped t-shirts and orange wine.
Website: www.freyastockford.co.uk
*******************
Jill Temporal
Jill is an established contemporary British Visual Artist. She paints vibrant artworks inspired by the beauty, connections and colours found within the natural world.
Jill works mostly in Acrylic, Oil & watercolour paints, although her creative expression embraces other mediums on occasion in her journey as a professional Artist.
Website: www.photos-art.co.uk
*******************
Philippa Tunstill
Philippa is a painter and artist working in Forest Hill South London with a studio in the artists enclave of Havelock Walk. She trained at Hornsey College of Art & Design (now Middlesex University) where she gained a First Class Honours Degree in Fine Art. After various experiences within the design field she pursued a career in teaching mainly within the University of the Arts London. She now works full time as an artist when she’s not swimming.
“My paintings are a continuous exploration of spatial ideas through colour/surface texture which is applied and manipulated to produce intense interactive little dramas. The process is intuitive and instinctive but with an underlying structure that contains the elements within the formality of the square. The square format has been a consistent part of my work as long as I can remember. It provides the means to extend and multiply but equally satisfies as a single unit in its perfect symmetry.
Drawing is not a primary expression or source of my ideas but a very necessary discipline that is imposed on myself at regular intervals in the painting process. The repetitive nature of the controlled drawn line – invariably pencil- invokes a calm clear space in my head that is almost meditative. The shapes and forms that appear are continually converging and separating in a series of sequential compositions that are structurally formal and closely related to those that appear in the paintings.”
Website: www.philippatunstill.com
*******************
Jane Wachman
Jane’s abstract paintings contain a real sense of place, inspired in equal measure by the South Downs, where she spends a lot of time, and the hustle and bustle of London where Jane has lived for many years. The amalgamation of these contrasting environments is often reflected in her work. From this there is an obvious process of deconstruction and reconstruction. For Jane the act of painting is a continuous process always changing, always taking away, to create something new. This is an integral to her practice and what she considers representational of our disposable society.
Jane’s work is a combination of paintings and sometimes prints. Both complement each but are not reliant on each other in the process of layering and the exploration of mark making. Prominent in Jane’s work is the strong use of colour both in intensity and in vibrancy. The use of fluorescent colours that often spar with each other capture the essence of the landscape, while the thin translucent layers, showing traces of what has gone before, enhance the feeling of transience.
More recently Jane has created a new series of work based on a trip to India where she visited both the North and the South. In the North she was blown away with the intensity of colour and the vibrancy of the cities. The South in comparison more muted and subtle in colour so unexpected.
Website: janewachman.com
*******************
Kitty Wass
Kitty graduated from Loughborough College of Art and Design with an honours degree in Printed Textile Design. In her early career she designed dress and furnishing fabrics for Liberty and the Italian and American dress and furnishing markets. Subsequently she taught fine art textiles and photography before turning full time to painting and jewellery making.
Travels initiate her themes and her garden is a constant though changing resource. Kitty uses imagery drawn from imagination, sketches, memories and photographs. ‘Paintings reflect layers of feeling, of joy, curiosity, mystical landscapes and the souls of humming birds flying to heaven. She paints in series of semi-abstract canvases. It is often described as ‘magical’, ‘mystical’… in fact, MAGIC REALISM.
Website: www.kittywass.co.uk
*******************
Breda Whyte
Breda is an Irish Artist living on the Wirral. She has a degree in Fine Art, and has ben a practicing artist for over twenty years. During that time she worked mainly as a batik artist, and has exhibited in London, the Peacock Gallery, Craigavon, Newry Arts Centre, The Drogheda Arts Centre, and Blue and Green Gallery, La Cheze, Brittany. Her present practice involves mixed media, and sculpture.
Breda has been commissioned to do murals in Cork and Dublin, and Batiks for Central American Committee donated to the Central Library Dublin, And St. Mary’s High School Midleton, Cork.
She has run a number of batik workshops, including a three day course for young refugees in Ireland.
Website: www.bredawhytearts.com
*******************
Kipper Williams
From a central London studio, Kipper Williams draws for newspapers, magazines, audio visual presentations and greetings cards. He has provided drawings for a number of books, most recently Bill Bryson’s ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’ (illustrated edition), Dr Tanya Byron’s ‘Your Child, Your Way’ and Graham Jones’ ‘Strange Requests and Comic Tales from Record Shops’. For the last three years his poster cartoon for the charity Contact The Elderly has become a regular feature on the London Underground.
With one-man shows at the Hay Festival, the Adam Street Gallery and the Cartoon Gallery, Kipper has featured in mixed exhibitions at the Duchamp at Herne Bay Festival, the Chris Beetles Gallery, the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival and the London Cartoon Museum. His cartoons have been acquired by the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Cartoon Art Trust. Private collectors include David Starkey, Jeremy Paxman, the Duke of Devonshire and Tina Turner. In 2010, he won the Duval Foundation Award at the ‘Chopin’s Smile’ exhibition held at the Muzeum Karykatury in Warsaw and in 2013 he was presented with the Joke Cartoonist Award by The Cartoon Art Trust. In 2014, Kipper was the Official Cartoonist for the Port Eliot Festival.
Website: www.kipperwilliams.com
*******************
Richard Wilson RA
Richard Wilson, born 1953, is one of Britain’s most renowned sculptors. He is internationally celebrated for his interventions in architectural space which draw heavily for their inspiration from the worlds of engineering and construction.
Wilson has exhibited widely nationally and internationally for over thirty years and has made major museum exhibitions and public works in countries as diverse as Japan, USA, Brazil, Mexico, Russia, Australia and numerous countries throughout Europe. Wilson has also represented Britain in the Sydney, Sao Paulo, Venice and Aperto Biennial and the Yokohama Triennal, was nominated for the Turner Prize on two occasions and was awarded the prestigious DAAD residency in Berlin 1992/3. He was one of a select number of artists invited to create a major public work for The Millennium Dome and the only British artist invited to participate in Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial 2000, Japan.
Wilson’s projects have generated universal critical acclaim. Wilson’s seminal installation 20:50, a sea of reflective sump oil, formerly in the Saatchi Collection and now permanently installed at Mona in Tasmania, was described as ‘one of the masterpieces of the modern age’ by the art critic Andrew Graham Dixon in the BBC television series The History of British Art.
Wilson was in 2004 appointed Visiting Research Professor at the University of East London; and at Tate Publishing as part of their British Artist Series books, launched in October 2005, Richard Wilson by Simon Morrissey. In 2006 he was elected as a member of the Royal Academy and in 2008 was awarded an Honorary Doctorate at the University of Middlesex.
Wilson’s commissioned contribution to Liverpool’s European Capital of Culture, 2008, entitled Turning the Place Over, comprised a vast ovoid section of a façade that rotated three dimensionally on a spindle. His regional cultural Olympic exhibition, Hang on a Minute Lads, I’ve got a Great Idea, at the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill 2012 had a hydraulically teetering replica coach (The Italian Job) positioned at the edge of the building’s roof. He opened Slipstream, a major commission for Heathrow’s Terminal 2 in April 2014, and in 2017 a major solo show at Annely Juda Gallery in London, entitled Stealing Space.
Website: www.richardwilsonsculptor.com
*******************
Levison Wood is a world renowned explorer, writer & photographer who has written eleven best-selling books and produced several critically acclaimed documentaries which have been aired around the globe.
He has travelled and filmed in over one hundred countries worldwide, and his expeditions include walking the length of the river Nile, the Himalayas, all of central America and circumnavigating the Arabian Peninsula. His most recent project followed the migration and conservation of elephants in Botswana.
Levison spent a number of years as a Regular Officer in the British Parachute Regiment, where he served in Afghanistan fighting against Taliban insurgents in Helmand and Kandahar. His military services has seen him deploy on operations and exercises on five continents.
He has interviewed and photographed some of the most prominent names in the international community, from Hollywood actor George Clooney to travel writer Paul Theroux and His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, the Explorers Club, Honorary Doctor at Staffordshire University & an ambassador of Unicef and for a number of other charities. When not abroad Lev lives in London.
Website: http://www.levisonwood.com/
*******************
THANK YOU!