Julian Brown The imagery in my work is very heavily influenced by nostalgic visions of the 1980’s and the folk art from my mother Polish heritage. Both of these worlds have a handmade geometric quality that has a playful and primitive relevance to the world we now live in. I try to explore this ‘clunkiness’…
Ruth Philo Ruth’s paintings are often site specific, exploring colour and abstraction associated with place and walking. A site becomes a physical and metaphysical source for painting, sometimes providing found pigment that Ruth makes into paint as well as emotional or unconscious connections that become resonant in the painting. A sense of the painting’s process,…
Barbara Howey My current body of work is paintings based on plants. Part of my process is photographing the species of plants seen on my daily walks, not rare but local, some native and some finding a space to grow where seeds have blown them from suburban gardens and wastelands. From ancient bluebell woods, woodlands…
Lucy Cox My practice focuses primarily on spatial ambiguity, an interest that I have been engaging with for some time, to construct abstract paintings which toy with interpretation and perception. I am fascinated by relationships between three-dimensional and two dimensional space, colour and rhythm, and figure and ground; as a result, forms, often mined from…
Paul Newman Paul Newman’s paintings weave together a tableau of motifs including; 18th & 19th-century landscape paintings with 20th century industry, architecture and cinematic monsters like Frankenstein’s and the human fly. The imagery also draws from memories and experiences throughout the artists life such as; his father’s Ford Escort van and the museum experience of Romantic…
Alex Hanna Alex Hanna’s paintings explore visual illusions via the depiction of arrangements of objects, surfaces and materials through the interpretation of observed data. He employs observation drawing and digital media. His work examines the surface qualities of the interior everyday objects and materials. BiographyAlex Hanna has exhibited at : Royal Academy of Arts Summer…
Susie Hamilton My painting is inspired by the idea of transformation, with people continually undergoing mutation. I turn human figures towards the non-human—grotesques, cyborgs, monsters and ghouls—consequently adding a layer of menace, pathos, comedy or mystery to the human image. But for me metamorphosis is not just about one image morphing into another, man into yeti for…
“The new Contemporary British Painting Prize is a brilliant new initiative that holds up a mirror to the wealth of practice and exciting talent alive in the UK painting scene today.” Kath Wood, Founding Director of Firstsite, Curator and Arts Consultant The Contemporary British Painting Prize Having decided not to hold the painting prize in…
Ruth Calland Ruth Calland is a painter, performer, curator and Jungian analyst. She has a special interest in alchemy and the emergence of the new, as part of the processes of creativity, healing, decolonisation and social change. Ruth is genderfluid and neurodivergent, areas which she thinks about in terms of the alchemical state of coniunctio:…
Iain Andrews My paintings begin as a dialogue, both with a particular Folk Tale and also with an image from art history – often a painting by an Old Master that may then be used as a starting point from which to playfully but reverently deviate. I am interested in how stories are retold and…
David Manley Manley’s practice is plural, hard to categorise and pin down. Themes have included responses to landscape, locations and events in Italy, Russia & Portugal, an exotic examination of viruses, portraits ‘for’ fictional Scandinavian detectives, and reflections on Heart Surgery. Supports and media are determined by the perceived needs of each series or groups…
Day Bowman I have been thinking on how we read the landscape – the rural rather than the urban – and the contrasts to be found topographically region by region. In the West Country, near to where I grew up in the Brendon Hills, there are landscapes of deep valleys and steep hills. The land…
Narbi Price Narbi Price’s work features seemingly everyday scenes which hold additional historical, cultural or personal significance, applying diverse techniques to a photographically derived painting style. It takes sites of chosen events and considers notions of collective memory, pilgrimage and history through the act of painting. He is interested in painting as a receptacle for…
Simon Carter I walk and draw on the local Essex marshes. I carry with me A4 paper and a tin of graphite sticks and crayons. I want to respond quickly to things seen, often returning to the same spot month after month, seeing what comes to light, hoping for the unexpected. In the studio the…
Greg Rook Greg Rook’s paintings explore the rich visual history, curious cultural politics and often complex ideologies of those who seek to start a new life or wish to lead alternative lifestyles. From pioneers travelling to new continents to those wanting to stay put and live self-sufficiently, Rook invites us to join him on his…
Stephen Palmer I make still-life paintings that feature A4 paper ‘models’, created by myself in the studio, as their subjects. These models are made quickly from a sheet of paper that has been defaced or decorated through a series of actions – cut-up, folded, ripped, screwed-up, scribbled or doodled on with biro or coloured pencil,…
Sean Williams My paintings are views of the fringes of suburbia, places that feel as though they are familiar, but then escape our conditioned response. I aim to place the viewer as ‘still points of a turning world’ – alone, for a while, then possibly watched as they look on. The scene switches between mundane…
Enzo Marra Enzo Marra’s imagery is marked by an immediacy and directness, the explored themes expressed made visible via instinctively applied linear and blocked out passages, executed to an intimate scale. Their largely angular nature conveying realtionships with symbols and sentiments related to the outside world. The purposely limited palette, allowing the depicted imagery to…
Mandy Payne Mandy Payne is a painter based in Sheffield.Her work is inspired by issues of gentrification, social housing, Modernist architecture and notions of utopias and dystopias. For the past 13 years her work has focused on Park Hill, the Grade II* listed Brutalist Sheffield council estate which has been undergoing regeneration. More recently she…
Karl Bielik I make visceral process driven oil paintings where the surface evolves out of chance encounters between marks and colour, the paintings are often heavily layered and reveal the history and doubt of the decision making. I work on thirty or so paintings at a time which range in scale from intimate to large….
A Geography of colour Ruth Calland This month Ruth Philo interviews painter Ruth Calland. Emergence and attunement to what is emergent, are the experiences that engage her. She has a deep interest in alchemy, which provides a framework for how she thinks about painting as process. She will often utilise two different points of reference…