Continuing our summer theme, you will find a fresh selection of artworks and ceramics celebrating garden flora and foliage, landscapes and birds including a NEW series of oil paintings by Cornelia O’Donovan ma rca. And showcasing new ceramic maker, Nicola Gillis.

Artists include – Cornelia O’donovan, Kim Atkinson, Tina Balmer, Lois Hopwood, Syann van Niftrik, Annabel Roberts, Tarragon Smith, Becca Brown, Kaz Robertson and Nicola Gillis.

 

CORNELIA O’DONOVAN ma rca – Cornelia plays with old folklore and poetry, but in a loose and dreamlike way. She draws particularly on tales native to the British Isles, especially Celtic poetry and myth. Her paintings are flat, stripped of all perspective or realism, their surfaces hazy and meandering like an old tale retold a thousand times. Roughly rendered yet delicately arranged, she creates patterned compositions reminiscent of old tapestries into which she plants naïve pre-Modern motifs. Cornelia trained at the Royal College of Art graduating in 2006. Her work is held in private collections in the UK and overseas. She lives and works in London.

NICOLA GILLIS – Nicola is based in Brighton and makes functional tableware. Through her work she invites you to be mindful of each of our daily eating and drinking rituals by focusing on the vessels that we use, what we see, what we share, what we hold and touch. She takes inspiration from the East Asian use of tableware, a specific purpose for each vessel and where pleasure is drawn from individuality. She does not seek to replicate exact size or marks and embraces imperfection. Shadows and light on daily walks throughout the seasons and the beauty found in degraded surfaces and patina  inform her work. Nicola studied at Forest Row School of Ceramics in 2019. Initially using the wheel, she developed her practice to include handbuilding with slabs, carving, and coils, all of which she finds to be a slower, more thoughtful approach to making. In November 2024, she received funding from the Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust to travel to South Korea to develop her skills under master potter Kwak Kyung Tae.

KIM ATKINSON – These paintings were all made in my garden and beyond, on the cliffs and slopes of the far west of Pen Llyn and in a small field we keep for a late cut of hay. In this field I often sit or creep about looking at grasshoppers, moths, bees, flies, butterflies. Being in among plants – with close focus binoculars and paintbrushes, one enters a world where the shadows of grasshoppers on the other side of a leaf provide drama, the subtle forms of leaves and their downy stems become a jungle of forms and texture. No need to travel far, the intimate landscape of home is sustaining and fascinating.

TINA BALMER – My painting is both inspired by, and a celebration of, the domestic and ordinary. Everyday objects represent the rituals of daily life, often jugs, vases, cups, tea pots and flowers. There is always a push pull between abstraction and the figurative with a fluid movement between what is there and what the painting is. I use paint in a relaxed way, changing perspective, with light and shadow informing the pattern, underpinned by a sense of design. I grapple with the subject and the paint until the painting emerges and becomes ‘itself.

LOIS HOPWOOD – My paintings and drawings are definitely affected by the seasons. The three pictures called ‘Hayfield / Gwyrdd’ are an expression of love for the green summer hay fields and blue hazy skies of summer. The two paintings of Orange and Lilac are the hot sunny days. And in winter it gets very dark again. If I have given some sort of shape to my day I like to draw first. The little bird studies are in graphite on gesso with a wax varnish. Drawing in pen and ink is irreversible. I like to work on a long sheet of lining paper and draw still lives with a stick pen and Indian ink as a sort of meditation.