UPSTAIRS AT THE ART SHOP, CROSS STREET & DOWNSTAIRS AT THE CHAPEL, MARKET STREET

A mixed selection of paintings, drawings, mixed media and ceramics, celebrating the joy and colours of gardens and the landscape.

Please ask to see more work by an individual artist.

TINA BALMER – ’A graduate of St Martins School of Art, my painting is both inspired by, and a celebration of the domestic and ordinary. The rituals of daily life are represented by everyday objects such as vases, jugs, tea pots and flowers. These are arranged creating patterns that are underpinned by a strong sense of design. Although figurative, I’m not concerned with getting an absolute likeness but with the painting itself. The paint, which is used in a relaxed way, the marks, the canvas, the colours, and the composition jostle with each other until the painting finds a life of its own.’

JAMES BURNETT STUART – James trained at Harrow College, made tableware for The Conran Shop, Designer’s Guild and Egg, and has been featured in World of Interiors, Elle Decoration and Country Living magazines. Solo shows of more individual pieces have been at The Scottish Gallery (Edinburgh), Egg (London) and Charleston Farmhouse (E.Sussex). James was also Artist-in-Residence at Charleston. ’I like the way pots enter our lives stealthily, benignly, and exert their quiet influence. As companions, offering beauty, comfort, practical service, sensuous experience all in a modest almost subliminal way. This is the beauty of pottery – that it lives side by side with us not calling for attention, and not provoking self-consciousness. But allowing, as it were by slow release, discoveries of depth and detail.’

ANN JOHNSON – Ann has worked with poets, printers and textile artists and her art has appeared in books and magazines, and galleries around the country. Several of her paintings have been hung at Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions and her work is mostly in private collections. From a background in journalism and animal advocacy she has discovered new ways of articulating a love of words, of drawing and painting and the natural world. Ann never includes human figures in her work saying, ‘I prefer to simply suggest evidence of human habitation. Abandoned garden forks, bits of trellis and buildings in stages of disintegration contribute not only exciting and contrasting marks to a composition, these also project mysteries and stories of the past inhabitants.’

BETH MORRISON –  ’I graduated from Middlesex in 2002 with a BA in Jewellery Design. I have always been interested in collections of tiny things. A turned out pocket, or a selection of bits and bobs in a match box. My favourite story as a child was ’Dolly in the deep freeze’. A story about a tiny doll living in the freezer isle of a supermarket, sleeping amongst the fishfingers and playing tennis with frozen peas. Recently, I have started making ceramic trees inspired by the tin and plastic trees found in toy farms and model villages. A whole tiny world to get lost in. I love to draw and am keen to transfer the illustrative painterly qualities into my tiny forest.’

GEORGIE RICHARDSON – Georgie studied Fine Art at Winchester School Of Art finishing in 1996. She has shown in mixed exhibitions in various galleries in the U.K and Berlin and has work in private collections worldwide. ’…painting is a place of absorption, a completely immersive activity. It starts with drawing, observation of the subject. This could take many forms from flowers that I have grown to heirloom spoons, or daily domestic objects. The common factor has to be at first personal, familiar, a landscape has, for me, to have been seen, experienced. Old spoons or forks having fed my children, flowers so ephemeral that they deserve taking time to see.’

BARRY STEDMAN – Barry’s colourful, dynamic ceramic forms come out of a deep connection to the landscape. All the work, developed in series, is rooted in the directness and urgency of drawing outside; responding to the weather, drama and life which surrounds his garden studio by the river Flit in Bedford. Starting on the wheel or constructed in slabs, the earthenware vessels are cut open and altered, scored and handled, before being glazed with layers of oxide, slip and washes of vivid colour. Barry completed a Ceramics degree at the University of Westminster in 2009, receiving the Caparo Award, joining Edmund de Waal’s studio that same year. His work has been featured in numerous exhibitions and galleries across the UK and internationally.

THOMASIN TOOHIE – ’…Strange things catch my eye. Something I have seen for the first time. It may be an atmosphere (indefinable) or it may be as simple as an arrangement of shapes and colours. I like urban settings, places which humans have humanised.’  Thomasin was awarded Best Newcomer – Welsh Artist of the Year, 2005. Following her move to Wales and the completion of an MA in Fine Art, Thomasin exhibited her solo show ‘South Wales Discovered’ with The Art Shop in 2006. Since then, she has exhibited in the National Eisteddfod, and took part in the touring show ’60 Years of the Welsh Group’.

SOPHIE TUTE – Sophie is a post-graduate in Fine Art from the Royal Academy Schools. London. ’We can be troubled and or consoled by the landscape we walk in. I hope this tension is in my paintings. A place painted in which we can visually, imaginatively enter and live in and imbibe the tonic of nature. It is not too bold to say these paintings are partly a contemplation, an inner meditation, and partly an attempt to behold the world.’

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