A lively mixed show consisting of sculptures, paintings, photographs and glass works by both students, profesional artists from the Midlands and myself.

The Artists

Amanda Noble

www.thefusedgarden.co.uk

I create beautiful glass sculptures for your garden or to hang in your home; adding a unique blend of colour and sparkle.

In your garden they look glorious in rain, snow and in the sun. 

In your home they glisten whatever the lighting conditions.

I studied Theatre Design at University and after my degree I freelanced at a variety of theatres and opera houses. 

I then moved into teaching and have been a teacher for over eleven years.

I am currently Head of Art at a busy secondary school.

My love of colour and painting has led me to use glass and my approach is as a painter.  I design, cut and kiln fire the glass at home in my workshop in Flore, a village in rural Northamptonshire.

Clare Eguchi

http://www.clareeguchi.com/

I am an English artist with Japanese Samurai ancestors, and my stylistic influences vary from the subtlety of Japanese patterns and textiles to the earthiness of Aboriginal painting from around the Pacific Rim.  I try to make the result, however, something completely unique, with inspiration coming from the natural world of forests, skies and rockpools. 

My paintings are not intended to be understood intellectually, but to be experienced and felt. They are born out of my emotions and experiences.

All aspects of my life can be viewed in my paintings.  Some paintings show my need for symmetry and balance in an otherwise unpredictable existence and others demonstrate my relationship with those people who are close to me.   Other paintings simply express my joy at being alive.

Jan Rawnsley

jan.rawnsley@sky.com

Jan undertook initial formal study at Dewsbury & Batley Art College in the North of England after which she set up and managed an Exhibition design and display business. Jan has undertaken 3 years of advanced training at Budapest Art College following which she has studied at Rochester College of Art. She has subsequently painted for 5 years as an advanced painter at Mid Warwickshire College of Art and is now a member of The Studio Artists painting in Leamington Spa.

She has exhibited her work previously at a variety of venues including the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists, Clay Barn Gallery Alcester, Mercado Gallery Barford, Warwick University Gallery, the Community Gallery Leamington Spa, the Pump Rooms Gallery Leamington Spa, Walton World of Art Wellesbourne, the Priory Theatre in Kenilworth, the Loft Theatre in Leamington Spa and at Warwickshire Art Weeks.  Her work has been accepted for the prestigious Midlands Open.

Jan works in oil, acrylic and mixed media. Her work is driven by her desire to express her emotional responses to her subject matter and this results in work that moves from realism towards abstraction.

Robin Caiger Smith

www.bunneyart.com

I have always been drawn to paintings of people – I find them endlessly fascinating and I enjoy trying to capture both a likeness and personality in my work.   My goal is to produce art which both speaks to the personal and the public.

Eileen Newton-Golding

Whilst my work is mostly non-figurative there is evidence of metaphoric influences, sometimes landscape or plant forms but also of the human figure. Perhaps an association of physical objects  - anchor, ship, plough, a leaf or wave – just a suggestion, a small moment of recognition, but sculpture remains in the abstract.

I often make sculptures that encompass several elements that relate to one another – with the physical sometimes symbolising the emotional.  Curves are a major element in my work; they fascinate me, soft undulating forms that can at once seem maternal or imprisoning. Sometimes my sculptures express response by counter-balancing shapes, describing physical elements of protection, enclosure collapse or support. Some pieces are resting on one another, seeming to offer support but simultaneously they are competing for space or encroaching on each other.

Sculptural issues of gravity and balance interest me, deciding where the sculpture should rest, where it lifts off the ground, the relationship between one, two or more forms. The dilemma whether forms should merge into each other, or retain their integrity, remaining separate. The point of contact with the ground is important, a time to explore the seeming dichotomy of weight and weightlessness. 

Clay offers the opportunity to play with surface, the illusion of physical materials – soft versus hard, fabric versus building remains. I work intuitively with the material preferring to carve rather than model and enjoying the elements of chance and discovery in the way a piece dries and changes shape.  

Brian Mutton

www.brianmutton.com

After a working life teaching Art and Design I am now concentrating on my own work.  I have exhibited widely in Northamptonshire with five solo exhibitions as well as mixed shows.

One important aspect of my work at the moment is to explore the boundary between representational painted image and constructed three dimensional structure. I use card or board constructions which are in themselves images

together with oil painting on the surface to emphasize the

pictorial nature of the pieces.

Subjects in this series have included abandoned interiors, natural patterns of foliage and undergrowth, quarried stone surfaces and coastal scenery.

Press

On the 7/8 of June , sculptor and painter Beatrice Hoffman opens her studio, garden and home for a mixed show of contemporary paintings, glass art, photography and sculpture, that promises to engross, entertain, delight astound and challenge in turn. The theme of the human head is taken up by several contributors -  from bronze and drawn portraiture (Daria Coleridge and Cianne Stone) to a more contemporary approach in painting (Sarah Bunney),  and the overlife size expressive heads of Beatrice Hoffman. Land- and seascape is represented by Jan Rawsley and Brian Mutton, who are finding new ways, and materials to approach an old theme. Margaret Godwin reduces nature to its abstract essentials of colour transitions. – which is a theme that Amanda Noble takes up in molten glass, as she – re-infuses pure colour into the cultivated nature of our gardens. Many of the sculptors work on the cusp between the human figure and abstraction.

Come to either just enjoy the work in a hamlet in the middle of the Northamptonshire countryside, or see what you can find to embellish your garden or house – which ever, it promises to be an eye-opening adventure. For more examples of the work on show, see the website www.beatricehoffman.co.uk, where you will also find directions.