March 16th, 2010

Shirley Eccles

“It might be the easiest to describe myself as a conceptual mixed media artist as I work with different mediums and techniques at different times, often combining and overlapping them. I love the wonderful energy and spontaneity I get from the use of colour and oil paint, the texture and “manipulation ” that clay can offer me, but at the same time I enjoy the technical challenges of the printed image or the unknown aspect of the fired article.”

“I have been working with paper porcelain for the past few years, but also find glass a very exciting and challenging medium. It has broken down the barriers between painting, printing, ceramics and sculpture. The fragile nature and ambiguity of the medium emphasizes the sensitive concepts and issues I am working with. My work has become 2D conceptual paintings / prints using a 3D material and adding to that challenge and chance due to the firing process.”

“Subconsciously I am working with the post-modernist grid. Whether it is in the square building blocks, post boxes, sewn ‘curtain’ or the repetition of the faces in the Kosovo children or the repetitive use of envelopes placed on a grided letter rack, the grid plays a very strong role in my work. The mediums, texture and materials I use have become metaphors for my inner experiences and silent thoughts.”

Flora Gare

For the past 8 yrs I have been investigating light; from projected light and daylight to materials that reflect light. Currently I am combining digital imagery with transparent and translucent materials to explore ideas about memory and time. A recent site specific piece was created for Moseley Road Baths, Birmingham to celebrate the former glory of the edwardian building out of 6000 suspended coloured acrylic beads.

Sally Haynes

I exhibit several times a year and open my studio at New Greenham Arts as part of Newbury Spring Festival. My artwork continues to address and explore a fascination with Science and Art. I have worked in the hospital departments of Genetics, Radiology & Pathology and alongside scientists at Rothamsted Research, Southampton University and University College London. The awareness of my own cyclical patterns of behaviour, coupled with an increasing interest in portraying subjects from a different viewpoint, has led to my working with particular shapes and scale change: bringing together worlds of symbolic visual language and pattern. I often use microscopic equipment, cameras and computers as drawing tools. My work is project based and drawing underlies everything I do.

Margaret Hodges

Following a commission to look at effects of climate change Margaret has been making a series of Hangings which relate to changing patterns of landscape. Flexible surfaces such a hessian and muslin reflect the concept of non-permanence and transition.

Ongoing work with drawings, prints and installation continues to present aspects of individual responses to confrontation and evasion in communal situations. Work can be seen and discussed by arrangement at Margaret’s studio at New Greenham Arts Centre.

Simon Jardine

I’m an illustrator/caricaturist/artist/designer and have been honing my creative ability for about twelve years. I create artwork both digitally on Adobe Illustrator and traditionally in ink and watercolour and in my favourite medium, acrylic, where I like adding texture to my work. I draw, paint or vector graphic all sorts of things and people in black and white and colour in my own whimsical style.

I hope to produce work that will amuse and entertain, while radiating warmth, happiness, eccentricity and quirkiness. Always on a mission of continual originality and excellence, I look forward to producing my best work yet.

I have completed illustration, painting and caricature commissions for advertising, design, the web, public relations agencies and theatre groups as well as directly for clients, both commercial and private.

Cipriano Martinez

“Weavings, patterns of nerves, mental projections prefiguring misleading ideas of possible maps -these are some of the resources Cipriano Martinez uses to draw a landscape. Nobody can encounter his work with an innocent gaze. All have the favourable prejudice that art always means something, because the lack of a name confounds, torments, and unhinges pure reason.”
Andres Isaac Santana. ArtNexus. No. 60. Volume 5. Year 2006.

Helen Peake

“As a painter I prefer to work with oil and watercolour but always explore new media keenly. As is the case with subjects I portray, inspired mainly by the world around me, I am trying to express my admiration for the natural world – and failing to match up; always developing my practice in the studio and out in the world.

“What is shown may not be obviously linked in some theme or other; the theme is the person whose life experiences create the connection.

“My chief interests artistically include the human figure, exquisite colour and light and universal space.

“It is a priviledge to have a space to work and think in and to be part of an artist group where we can discuss our work and exhibit together.”

Steven Sommerville

My work explores areas that have a sense of dislocation from modern society. Some places have a special feel to them; forgotten, wild, empty, timeless, unloved, lonely, or just with an echo of times long past.