Description

Dreaming of the Black Mountains

Stained Glass Panel

Showing in our Hay Festival exhibition 2021 opening on Saturday May 22

Hand painted stained glass by Tamsin Abbott

20.1 x 24 cm cm

Collect from gallery £690

Including UK delivery £725

Tamsin’s work is influenced by the Herefordshire countryside, the orchards, the hills, the woods and all the plants, birds and animals that grow and live.

Tamsin works on mainly British made mouth blown glass, in fabulous colours. She completely covers the glass with a special black glass paint which is totally opaque. When the paint is dry Tamsin then scrapes back into it using a variety of simple tools. She uses the paint like a scraper board which is working in the negative to achieve an effect rather like a woodcut.

“I completed a degree in English literature at Stirling University (1985 -1989) where I specialised in medieval literature. I was drawn to Stirling by the landscape and the wildness of the mountains and hills. I was not disappointed and was surrounded by a suitable back-drop for the subject I was studying. My love of the language and stories of medieval literature was enhanced by the fact that much of the research material I was reading was illustrated with paintings and simple woodcuts of the period. I became immersed in a magical world of romance, strange words and naïve but arresting images, and it was not long before I began to paint and write for pleasure as well as working for the degree.

After leaving university (with a first class honours degree), I worked in several different jobs and lived in Cumbria for a while before moving to Herefordshire where Mike and I had bought a woodland together with a small group of people. I then returned to college to complete a foundation year in art at Gloucester College of Art and Technology where I was expertly tutored in life drawing and discovered the highly influential work of the Brotherhood of Ruralists. A few months later I got a job working in The Collection Gallery in Ledbury which was a useful insight into the world of selling craft. It was at this time that I married Mike and soon after became a full-time mother of two.

In 1999 I began an evening class in stained glass at Hereford College of Art and Design. I soon gained an OCN in the craft but continued the course for a total of four years until our second child started school. At this point I decided to take things more seriously and invested some money in a kiln and built a studio in which to work.”

Dreaming of the Black Mountains