‘Winter Curiosities’ Festive Exhibition 2024

Mary Griffin

Mary was born in Birmingham in 1954. She decided at an early age to pursue a career in art and trained at Birmingham Art College.

Mary began painting seriously whilst raising a family. Periods of time were spent teaching art in local colleges before she decided to teach independently to allow more time to focus on her own paintings.

Although Mary Griffin works in all media, because of their immediacy, she finds pastels are ideal. She combines pastels with acrylics, or watercolours to provide interesting surface contrasts and atmospheric effects. These are especially suited to figure and interior compositions which is a recurring theme to her work. Apart from the never-ending challenge of drawing people, Mary finds the whole aspect of body language fascinating. Many of her paintings are a glimpse of a moment in time. Her chief concern is to make a statement about life which most people will relate to from their own experience, but everyone’s interpretation will be different. Narratives are left to be interpreted by the viewer. The people who feature within Mary’s paintings often remain isolated in their own company, left to contemplate their lives. She aims to create art works that depict life – as it really is, but to discover new ways of expressing this.

In addition to figure compositions Mary is also known for her paintings of landscapes and garden scenes. She uses the same mixed media approach, combining acrylic or watercolour underpainting with a more direct pastel drawing.

Hilke MacIntyre

Artist Hilke MacIntyre grew up in North Germany where she studied at the College of Art & Architecture in Kiel. In 1996 she moved to Scotland where she divides her time between painting, printmaking and producing ceramic reliefs. Hilke’s work uses a simplified figurative style with strong abstract pattern. Influences include ‘primitive’ art, early 20th Century European art and contemporary design. You may have seen her linocut motifs adorning the packaging of Doves Farm flour.

Helen Martino

Back by popular demand is Helen Martino, who describes her own work as ‘serious, posh and frivolous’. Fascinated by body language, her ceramic sculptures embody a sense of narrative, where a still gesture captures a moment which suggests a past and a future story. She uses a hand building technique, manipulating soft and flexible sheets of clay. The surfaces are painted with slips, underglaze pigments and resists, often glinting with silver and gold lustres. 

Tamsin Abbott

Our festive line up features stained glass panels by Tamsin Abbott. Influenced by the natural world and its associated myths and legends, she tries to imbue her work with a sense of these magical qualities which connect humankind to the landscape while doing justice to the alchemical qualities of the glass itself.

Jemima Jameson

Jemima Jameson works mainly in acrylics, preferring to paint onto wooden panels, bowls and furniture. Her desire to paint and draw has been part of her whole life and is quite simply a celebration of the natural world that she is compelled to describe. Her wooden boxes and cabinets often serve as treasure chests for cherished keepsakes.

John Exton

John Exton’s works in pen and ink illustrate a private world of myth and legend. He sees the work as ‘A Bestiary For our Times’. He uses a plethora of stimuli to produce his illustrations, including the Medieval world, dreams, journeys into the subconscious and Magic, Mystery and Folklore. 

Rachel Wright

Textile artist Rachel Wright will be showing three new machine embroidery pictures. Studies of the landscapes and seascapes that inspire her are painstakingly translated into carefully cut and pieced fabric collages, lively and swirling with movement, overlaid with vibrant threads used like a fine paintbrush to fill in the details, enabling Rachel to draw and paint through fabric and stitch.