This latest solo exhibition by Jill Campbell predominantly features many of the paintings she completed throughout 2020. During that year Jill studied the light on the fell landscape near her home in County Durham, particularly at sunrise.
The idea of a new day representing a new beginning, a hopeful emotional moment, was the common thread linking these abstract expressionist paintings. This searching for hope was undoubtedly a subconscious response to an extraordinary year. The year began with January Sunrise and fittingly ended with the beginning of a series of small paintings, Fell Lights 1 and 2. The exhibition also contains some small mixed media studies on paper made before 2020 in which can be seen the beginning of ideas that were developed in some of the later paintings.
Jill exhibits in galleries throughout the UK and has had paintings selected for many prestigious open exhibitions, including the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists Prize Exhibition, the Ferens Open and the New Light Art Prize.
Art & Contemporary Art
Pascale Rentsch
Pascale Rentsch RSW is based in the East Lothian region of Scotland where she makes the most of the surrounding hills and coastal landscape. She draws and paints outdoors, directly from nature in all weather conditions. This is a technique called en plein air painting. She works instinctively and spontaneously to capture nature and the elements.
Talking about her painting Pascale says, “My language is paint and like a conductor guiding an orchestra, I enjoy working outside with my materials, exploring mark-making and connecting with my surroundings, reacting to what I see, feel and hear. I love the fact that whenever I am in nature, I know I will always find something beautiful, something that touches me however small and insignificant it might appear“.
Originally from Switzerland Pascale trained in Scotland where she graduated with a BA in Drawing and Painting at Edinburgh College of Art in 1999. In October 2022 she was awarded full membership of The Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour (RSW).
Pascale will be exhibiting in a solo show at Watermark Gallery in March 2023. Her previous exhibition in 2022 alongside Michele Bianco in Off The Beaten Track was a resounding success and we are looking forward to seeing new work in the forthcoming exhibition.
To see Pascale in action please watch her video on this website (below) called “This is my voice”.
Art & Contemporary Art
Jason Hicklin
Jason Hicklin captures the feel of the weather and light and its effect on the landscape. All of Jason’s work is begun outdoors. Carrying the minimum of equipment, he will walk and climb the desired area for days and sometimes nights, often in extreme weather. He describes working outdoors in these tense and exciting conditions as a tremendously connecting experience – feeling a part of the land itself.
The result is a striking record of the elemental collisions between earth, sea and weather. He conveys the bleak essence of driving rain, when the mist closes down, and masters the polarities of bright skies and shadowed rocks. His work is charged with an atmosphere born of an intimate knowledge of the landscape and a direct physical experience of its changing moods.
Jason Hicklin was born in Wolverhampton in 1966 and studied at St. Martins College of Art, where he was a student of renowned printmaker Norman Ackroyd. After completing a postgraduate course at the Central School of Art in 1991, Jason combined working as Ackroyd’s studio assistant and editioner with producing his own work and teaching printmaking at City and Guilds of London Art School.
Jason is currently Head of Printmaking at City and Guilds. He was elected a member of the Royal Society of Painting and Printmakers in 1993 and has had numerous solo and joint exhibitions in the UK and abroad.
Art & Contemporary Art
Louise Davies
Painterly images using intense layers of translucent colour and overlapping shifting shapes are pulled together by calligraphic lines that define the subject matter. This is the hallmark of artist Louise Davies RE. Her work covers a range of techniques including painting, etching and monoprints. All of which employ the artist’s individual approach to colour.
Much of this work stems from her formative years in the West of England where the countryside was her place of reference. Later moving to London the artist reminisced on the landscape by adding her own romantic notion of colour to emphasise the beauty of nature, induced by nostalgia for the past. Suns rising and setting; turbulent storms; calm and troubled waters, are all represented by the artist using her unique style of layering bold transparencies of colour that are all enveloping
Davies also uses drama and vibrant colour to depict London and cityscapes. Buildings are back lit by luminescent skies that add magic and excitement to the already vibrant city. The River Thames is set alight with neon colours that reflect the mood of the image. And yet, the addition of line adds structure to the scene giving it stability.
It is apparent in all of Davies work that her love of the environment is paramount and that her intuitive use of the media is testament to her mastery of these techniques.
Louise Davies R.E. is a fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers and currently resides in London with her husband and family. She has devoted the last thirty five years to her art work having trained as a painter and printmaker.
Art, Ceramics & Contemporary Art
Louise McNiff
Louise McNiff is inspired by vast open moorland and the steep rocky edges that look down onto deep sweeping valleys. Dark patches of tree belt, stone walls and hedges fragment the land. The landscape of The Peak District, is the place that inspires Louise’s work.
Louise McNiff creates prints and produces hand-built ceramics in her studio, situated on the edge of the Derbyshire Peak District. Using techniques which draw on her background as a Printmaker, Louise ‘etches’ sgraffito lines into the leather hard clay with handmade tools. Coloured slips are monoprinted, painted and stencilled to build layers of drawing, mark making and colour. She works intuitively, until Louise feels that she has reached a balance of colour, shape, line and the experience of the landscape has been conveyed. The vessels are then taken to stoneware temperature in an electric kiln.
Art & Contemporary Art
Rob Moore
Rob Moore is a full time professional artist and was formerly Dean at Hull School of Art and Design. Educated at Sheffield College of Art and Design, Rob has been committed to his practice as a painter and printmaker since being awarded the prestigious Granada Fellowship in Fine Art at The Institute of Advanced Studies at Manchester Polytechnic. Rob Moore has an impressive track record of exhibitions across the UK with many works in public and private collections. His work is highly sought after and collected.
Rob’s work does not fit neatly into a category and he continually modifies and explores his ideas and processes free of fashionable consideration. His work demonstrates a sensibility and craft that results in images that are sensitive and memorable. In recent years after a long interest in the abstract his work started to show the influences of his rural location and many visits to high places in Europe and further afield with a sense of landscape shimmering through obsessive exploration of marks and surfaces.
Art & Contemporary Art
Colin Black
My work is primarily mixed-media and landscape based. My most recent series focusses on the monasteries and priories of Yorkshire. It’s their juxtaposition of architectural geometry and irregularity of decay that holds my attention. Even though it is their physical locations that inspire me it is back in my studio that a piece will take emotional shape, and the spirit of the place is realised. I love colour and express this through a variety of materials that includes oil, acrylic and water-based paint, oil pastel, collaged imagery, particularly maps, I will add and take away until its required “rightness” is achieved, through the creative process of distillation.
I studied at the Royal College of Art and the Chelsea School of Art in London. I worked as a graphic designer and taught art and design for many years. I spent twenty-five years living in Scotland, and now live in York with my wife Sallie, where we run Seek Art School. I work and teach in Seek Studio.
I have had work exhibited in solo and annual group exhibitions for the Royal Scottish Academy, the Royal Scottish Society of Watercolours and Visual Art Scotland. I have also been accepted for York Open Studios for the last two years.
Art & Contemporary Art
Kirsty Whyatt
Kirsty Whyatt was born in Saddleworth, Greater Manchester but is now based in Leeds, West Yorkshire. Kirsty gained a degree in Exhibition Design at Humberside University (now the University of Lincoln) before embarking on a career as a freelance photographic stylist, which she has done for over twenty years.
Kirsty began her artist career in 2017 when she took the plunge and converted half of her garage into a studio. For Kirsty the light in a painting is the most important thing, it brings atmosphere “like nothing else”.
Art & Contemporary Art
Jane Walker
Jane Walker is a printmaker who uses the reduction linocut technique to produce handmade limited edition prints.
Each print is created from a single block. Through each stage of cutting, inking and printing the image is revealed as the actual block is destroyed. A reduction lino print can therefore never be reprinted and the editions are small. There is no opportunity to go back and modify previous layers.
Jane studied at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art before following a career in design at the BBC in London. She has now come full circle and returned to her first love, printmaking and particularly linocuts.
Fascinated by the bold, graphic and sculptural qualities of the medium her inspiration comes from the spaces in between objects and the patterns they create. Ordinary things; flea market finds, souvenirs, red cherries, jugs, coffee pots, pans, fresh flowers are all brought together to evoke a feeling, a memory or a sense of place.
Jane Walker is a member of the Oxford Printmakers, the Gloucester Printmaking Cooperative and an elected Associate member of the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers (RE).
