Living and working in the Southeast of England my paintings are deeply intwined with travel and walking. Through a series of drawings, paintings and photographs I capture the responses to people and places along the way. Reflecting on the feelings, thoughts and memories evoked by the experience when making the work. The ever changing landscape always opens up new vistas. Trying to capture a moment, which resonates for me, where the different elements of light, colour and shade come together in a way that can represent something new. I try to work quickly using intuitive marks in order to encourage this new image to emerge organically. Each piece like a poem, is a tapestry of multiple experiences, inviting viewers to engage with the extraordinary found in the ordinary. Often, inspiration arrives during mundane activities, whether driving, parking or shopping. It is in these everyday tasks that I step outside to observe life from a different perspective, finding beauty and significance in the overlooked. This practice of transforming the mundane into the extraordinary is central to my artistic vision, encouraging a deeper appreciation for the world around us.
Since my degree in Fine Art from Middlesex university I have been making paintings in oil paint and watercolour from my life experiences, particularly focussing on landscape. I work from my garden studio in Lewes and exhibit work in the local Sussex area. I also enjoy teaching students Art at a local 6th Form college in Brighton.
instagram: @carolinesmithpainter
Context sits at the centre of this body of work, with the lack of context being key. These paintings incorporate elements of both abstraction and figuration, with forms appearing and disappearing as the painting is discovered. The work is autobiographic, referencing personal experiences with the outside world, but through the painting process interactions and forms are recontextualized and defamiliarized. The paintings take on new implied narratives and atmospheres, losing and gaining new meaning. These new meanings are understood through the titling of each works, which suggests a narrative for each painting, whilst still allowing space for interpretation.
These paintings engage with the materiality of paint, exposing all layers of the painting’s surface. With this, the painting process becomes a space for play. Overlapping forms and additions of bright colour create a pictorial language which produces new ambiguous spaces, both regarding spatial ambiguity and what is presented to the viewer. Quick gestural marks imply chaos and infer a subtle sense of possibility, ranging in intensity between the paintings. Gesture and mark making show the progression of the paintings, from a depiction of personal physical and psychological spaces to something altogether different. Procedures of application and cancellation act as physical thinking process, and from this emerges works which are made from and perpetuate misunderstanding, both inviting and yet resisting decoding.
Instagram: @elinorman.artist
Helen’s work documents everyday scenes captured in the landscape around her. By focusing on discarded items and materials left over from a working day the paintings show snapshots of life in the windswept expanse of the North Highlands. Her paintings use the vast landscapes and moody skies, often associated with the area, as a cinematic backdrop to empty buildings and industrial sheds, tangled fences and bleak car parks that bring a narrative of day to day life and industry on the north coast.
Helen Moore graduated from Bradford Art College with a BA Hons in Fine Art in 2003. Helen moved from her home in West Yorkshire to the North Highlands in 2007
www. helenmooreart.co.uk
Hubcap Creatures is actually Ptolemy Elrington.
Ptolemy was born in the south of England but grew up in the north. He studied art and design to degree level at Bradford and Illkley Community College in the mid eighties. He has travelled extensively and has worked at a variety of jobs. These have included theatre set design and construction, stage design and construction, assorted large scale community art sculptural projects and all whilst pursuing his own artistic agenda.
Within his work he concentrates on creating sculpture of natural forms from found and re-cycled materials. At the moment he is working with a variety of materials including shopping trolleys, scrap metal and car wheel trims which he re-shapes into a variety of life forms.
Past clients include DEFRA (formerly MAFF), The Eden Project, Kenwood, the R.S.P.B., The Environment Agency, WWF, Essex County Council, Brighton County Council, Ronseal, Anglian Water, East Coast Trains, Ecover, DHL and Flora.
TV appearances include Richard and Judy, Blue Peter, Smart and Art Attack and Collectors Lot.
Printed media appearances include The Times, The Telegraph, The Daily Mail, The Sun, FHM, The Observer and numerous local papers as well as many international magazines and papers.
hubcapcreatures.com
Most sculptures are fabricated entirely from sheet metal but some introduce mixed media in the form of salvaged or drift wood to enhance the representation of nature. Others are made entirely from scrap metal: reusing materials and reforming them into a beautiful piece of art which reflects nature and which, somehow, seems a fitting way of demonstrating the ongoing worth of the materials often so readily discarded.
Many of the artist’s pieces are an observation of nature, using this man-made material to capture the unique movement, character and alertness for which animals and birds are so much loved and which makes these sculptures such a popular personal art choice.
dadeymetalart.co.uk
Instagram: diccondadey
From 1986 to 1996 I owned a restaurant in Brighton and sold it when I became hooked on ceramics at an evening class. So that I could study the subject further. I spent five years at college, studying photography and plastics as well as ceramics. When I graduated in 2001, I took out a lease on workshop premises in Hove, and sublet spaces to other artists/craftspeople. Since then I have exhibited and sold my work at art fairs and galleries throughout the British Isles. In 2004 I won an award for Best Newcomer at BCTF, and have written features for their magazine “The Craftsman’. I took a post grad in teaching and learning in HE, and have worked part-time as a tutor at Northbrook College, Brighton University and HMP Ford.
My inspiration comes from flowers and plants that we see all around us, in gardens, fields even cracks in the pavement. I particularly love the secret worlds inside these flowers, in the patterns and textures hidden away that give a continuing sense of promise and renewal.
Until 2005 my work had been mainly in the domestic & functional arena, but then I decided to work on larger, often one off, sculptural pieces. So far, I have concentrated on the forms of seed pods and fruiting bodies which ties in with my earlier work, but which looks completely different.
I like to play with scale and will often imagine the size that a plant must appear to an insect…what is it about the flower that attracts or repels? Often I will scale my sculpture up so that we can have an ‘insects eye view’ of it.
I work in stoneware, throwing the basic shape of the sculpture, then I alter and model onto it. This gives me a certain speed and control which is the way I prefer to work. My pieces are high fired so that they can go into an interior or exterior environment.
My glazes are chosen to compliment the form and are often slightly chrystalline or irradescent, this makes the pieces glow.
Life isn’t linear which can be a difficult pill to swallow. My paintings rise and fall like the unpredictable stages in life. They are amalgamations of ranting and vulnerable conversations between me and the canvas, translating and untangling the thoughts into something visual. Each painting works as a pocket that captures the mind and spirit, embodying a world that views emotion as we feel it, rather than something that needs to be verbally articulated. The canvas becomes a host for the collection of these narratives, created through representations of body, nature, and landscapes. A manifestation of the completely intangible.
Process is an important part of my practice. Instinct, improvisation, and chance are the building blocks through which my paintings are constructed, allowing them to remain fresh and unpredictable. I pour paint so pigments seamlessly sink and blend into the canvas. Creating accidents, repeating, and refining it, so that the paintings are an ever-growing organism, shedding and re-forming. Colours and movement emerge from my synaesthetic experience to music, using my brushes and paint as instruments of composition.
Where does a painting start or end, does it ever end?
In my case, no. The paintings evolve, move, listen, understand, and learn. They are pieces of myself in all states of well-being. Pretty or ugly, framed in fabric. And once I’ve enriched the canvas with enough of my thoughts, they belong as tangible fragments of the past. They no longer belong to me, but to the viewer, for them to dissect and converse with in a language of their own.
www.instagram.com/karan.nerwan/
Paintings of the feeling of the sea
Looking at the light in water,
time stops,
becomes fluid,
a moment may be an eternity,
hours of the day disappearing as if the waves have claimed them sending them further than the eye can see
I cannot think of better way for the hours to go unnoticed by watching the sun on and in the sea.
In this body of work Nina is conveying her sense of being submerged in the sea and our
effect on the ecology of it. They are her observations of light through water in its many forms, of the emotional connection and sensations of the mercurial mutability of water.
Being in the sea is to feel part of nature, becoming more in tune with our intuition and body. The ancient Icelandic word for intuition is InnSaei also meaning “the sea within” which is the borderless nature of our inner world, feelings and imagination beyond words.
These paintings become internal, noticing the symmetry with the inside the body such as fascia; the connective tissue that holds us together; with forms found in the rest of nature.
Nina’s early vivid memories of being mesmerised by light moving through water in conjunction with her love of swimming, began a lifetimes fascination of light and water. This preoccupation continued since moving to Brighton 20 years ago. In this time, she studied Fine Art at City College, Painting at the University of Brighton and MA at the RCA in London. She has worked as a holistic sports massage therapist, learning in depth about anatomy and physiology and observed how emotions and stress are directly linked to physical trauma in the body and vice versa.
Our relationship with the sea is an important one. It is heart-breaking to watch the damage being done to its inhabitants. The coral reefs are being decimated, by temperatures rising and the delicate ecology of the sea being destabilised on every level with overuse and dumping.
In an article, Enric Sala is a conservationist and Explorer-in-Residence with the National Geographic, sets out their goals to help protect critical marine ecosystems worldwide, and to develop new business models for marine conservation. There is a real chance that with the constant and valiant efforts of people and organisations such as Enric Sala and Pristine Seas there can be a change. They are trying to secure 30% of non-fishing,
non-dumping and non-tourism areas of the sea by 2030. Essentially creating marine national parks. If we can achieve this life and balance could be restored to the seas. People could make their living and the sea could absorb our carbon enough to start reversing climate change.
There is a simple message that resonates … ‘we can change this is if we become emotionally invested in the sea, that we really feel the plight.’ We can see what is happening to our environment on land with the naked eye and feel the presence of the increasingly worrying weather changes but unless we delve beneath the surface of the sea or choose to watch or read information about the marine ecosystem, we can be oblivious to the devastation being wrought.
This body of work looks beneath the surface of the waves and relates both the trauma and joy of what is happening there to what we experience emotionally and physically in our bodies.
www.ninajosephinegarstang.com
ninagarstang@hotmail.co.uk
Roberta Young trained at Camberwell School of Art, then at Goldsmiths London University 1990- 93. She has been represented by Cameron Contemporary Gallery in Hove since 2021 and has exhibited at several London Art Fairs. Roberta exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts’ Summer Exhibition this summer, her work having been being selected by Cornelia Parker. For the last two years, Roberta has also curated works from 7 artists in her Open House ‘Cats Creep’ in Brighton.
Roberta’s paintings are inspired by her experiences and observations. Inspired by her daily walks and exploration of the South Downs she explores our connection with nature at large and what it reflects of our own nature. Her landscapes are focused on hawthorn trees, their dramatic shapes determined by the costal winds. Like the hawthorn tree, we go through life always the same person, but shaped by our relationships, our circumstances, our daily challenges.
The pastel tree works are a response to the powerful growth of trees, the twists and turns the trunks and branches form as they reach for light. Recently her work has been focused on the dynamic growth of summer plants and popular garden flowers with their dramatic shadows.
Roberta’s work is vibrant with movement, her use of line is dynamic and fluid. She combines luminous washes and solid blocks of colour with expressive line drawing. Light is a strong feature in Roberta’s paintings, whereby the shadows resonate with a life and character of their own, or backlit figures loose their individualisation for the impression they leave against intense bright background.
www.instagram.com/robertayoungart