Hay Festival Virtual Exhibition 2020
at Old Chapel Gallery, Pembridge, to run during Hay Festival Digital 2020 will open on Sunday May 17 and continue to the end of June. We will feature the work of talented British artists and makers from far and near.
Heading the line up will be a tempting collection of stained glass from ever popular artist Tamsin Abbott whose work is influenced by our ancient land and how we are connected to it: the hills, the woods, the plants, birds and animals that live alongside us and the world of myths and fairytales that we have spun around it.
Artist Sue Hayden will be featuring a glorious collection of landscapes painted whilst on location in Pembrokeshire and several recent paintings of nudes. Sue is excited by the relationship between texture, shape, light and space in landscapes and paints with acrylics and pastels on paper that have been layered up beforehand with paint and paper creating a collage effect. This adds energy, randomness and interest to the subject. Her work is created from sketches and notes based on her impressions of what she is looking at and feeling. She rarely refer to photographs.
“I paint the texture, colour and light I see in landscapes, seascapes and the human form. I’m particularly drawn to the Welsh Coast and the forests and hills around Worcestershire, drawing and making detailed notes outside then painting in my tiny studio. I use acrylics, pastels and collage on Saunders Waterford 640 gsm paper for most of my paintings and my Giclee Prints are printed on Fine Museum Paper”
Ceramicist Kirsti Brown currently produces hand built vessels and bottles in a variety of stoneware clays in sumptuously summery colours reminding us of days by the sea. The slab built bottles are created using thinly rolled clay to create finished pieces which are light and elegant. Coiled bottles are spherical in form, but each one is completely different due to the nature of the construction method.
The bottles made are reminiscent of human forms having defined shoulders and narrow necks. The glazes and decorations are then added to evoke landscapes, seascapes and marks found in the landscape. The coiled forms are reminiscent of washed and worn beach pebbles. She uses a dry turquoise glaze as well as impressed marks highlighted with copper carbonate and over glazed with a satin white glaze. Using a variety of clays, the glaze is altered from a vivid turquoise to a washed out blue.
Kathryn O’Kell has been carving wood reliefs for more than 30 years and it is wonderful to introduce her work here for the first time. Using English Lime wood and traditional hand carving techniques she depicts mainly birds, her favourite subjects since childhood. Kathryn only needs to look out of her shed window when working and her inspiration is flying past, circling overhead or resting on the woodshed. Kathryn says: “I’m never entirely sure what I want to make until it is made. The initial idea may be : species of bird, its’ landscape, a colour and the resulting carving develops organically from there.”
Jewellery maker/designer Lesley Strickland is always a firm favourite with Hay Festival goers so we are happy to have a range of her jewellery in cellulose acetate to compliment your summer wardrobe.
The work of Sculptor Sallie Wakley comes from her life long passion for animals and nature. Each piece is as individual as the animals she portrays, starting with the clay and glazes that she makes from her own recipes to the creature itself which she hand builds over a number of days. The huge diversity of animals gives her an ever growing abundance of inspiration although she regularly returns to her own favourites the fox and the hare which we are showing at the gallery.
Artist Jackie Morris will be showing a new range of premium limited edition prints enhanced with gold and silver leaf. New paintings from Jackie will be on our website as and when they become available. Jackie is well known for her illustrations in children books and more recently for the award-winning ‘The Lost Words’, in which she collaborated with Robert McFarlane, a collection of ‘spells’ with words from the natural world that the junior Oxford Dictionary had removed…Jackie studied at Hereford College of Arts and at Bath Academy.
On going is an ever-changing collection of unique garden sculptures to enhance your outdoor space in a variety of media such as stoneware, forged iron, stainless steel, glass and more including the work of several sculptors new to the gallery.
