It's always been my dream to become an artist, drawing has always interested me and as a kid I loved nothing less than to be in my personal idealistic world, sitting for hours, attempting to encapsulate my frolicsome imagination and put all my sketches down on paper.
The will to create my very own vision was sparked, and if I was fighting with something, I'd often ask my pa to draw it for me. I'd watch him intently and after pinning the drawing up on my bedroom wall I might copy it repeatedly till I got it right.
However the 1st masterpiece I ever made was on the backseat of his new auto, a pretty drawing of a flower in bright blue biro the necessity to create was just that powerful.
Art continued to be my main focus, at home, all though college, and then on to 6th form university, at Sir John Deanes University here I was urged to push my technical capability, referring to the study of the great Experts .
I went on to study fine art and design, at Chester Varsity . It was here that I was given free reign to really experiment, we received no bounds and I had to find my private style, which was brilliant. It was in the 2nd year of my degree that disaster struck ; a special person was taken away from me in a unexpected and lethal automobile accident. My full world was ripped to shreds and I was fully lost and in looking for reasons answers and solace, I turned to the single thing which I felt couldn't be taken way from me, my painting. The foundation and desire to color from the soul developed.
I ended up painting continually, as a release in an ever lively and frequently delirious demeanour, each painting reflecting my search to find inner peace. I was striving to do the best that I could in honour of my soul mates memory and to make him proud, I fought thru my degree, and finished with a body of design which was actually soulful.
It was at about that point that I realized that I wished to pursue my dream. My inspirations are drawn from the reflection of self experience and emotive senses. My work is a developing journey with each painting representing feelings and states of being. I use myself as the physical subject, which feels natural to me because of the introspective nature, stressing the emotion with the encircling background.
I'm interested by the abutment of the literal figurative content against abstract lively forms, which incite 2 different states of mind. The physicality of painting interests me, and I really like to paint energetically, painting almost all of the background with my hand. Apropos artists I'm influenced by Bacon, Freud, and John Piper, and latterly comic artist David Mack who creates attractive characters thru the bleeding of water saturated colors and which electrified the fluidity of my work.
Beryl Cook was born between the 2 world wars, she finally left Kendrick College in Reading at the age of fifteen, where she went to secretarial college and then into an insurance office. After moving to London and then Hampton, she at last married her nextdoor neighbour from Reading, John Cook. He was an officer in the Merchant Navy and after he left the sea in 1956, they acquired a bar for a year before John took a job in Southern Rhodesia with a motor company.
Beryl acquired their young child a box of watercolours, and when showing him the simple way to use it, she made a decision that she herself quite enjoyed painting. John afterwards purchased her a child's painting set for her birthday and that was with this that she produced her first important work, a half-length portrait of a darker skinned woman with an empty expression and big drooping juggs. It was aptly named 'Hangover ' by Beryl's hubby and still hangs in their home today. In 1964 Beryl cook and her man returned to the United Kingdom settling 1st in Cornwall and then later in Plymouth where, in the summer months, Beryl ran a boarding house for holiday-goers on the seafront. Beryl had now been painting for several years, basing her footage on her everyday discoveries of folks round her.
By 1975 she had assembled countless paintings that covered the walls of their boarding house. A buddy took away twelve or so and, to Beryl's surprise, managed to sell them all for £10 each. Beryl was happy and quickly increased her production.
Her success came to the awareness of Bernard Samuels at the Plymouth humanities Centre who swayed her to mount her first exhibition featuring seventy five paintings. It was a sell out. The rest, as one says, is history. An article quickly appeared in the Sun. Times Mag , followed by exhibitions at the Whitechapel and Portal Studios in London. Her first book 'The Works was revealed in 1978. Her paintings were then reproduced as greetings cards and short edition prints and shortly her work was being featured around the globe, tickling ribs from Kingston to the Cape, and creating substantial favored commend. This popular commend has been accompanied by heavy urgent appreciation, most particularly with the including of her painting in the 5th Peter Moores exhibition at the Hiker Art Gallery in Liverpool where she was seen within the context of conventional recent art, alongside Bridges Riley and Victor Passmore. The new Glasgow Museum of Modern Art has latterly bought some of her original work, making certain her a place in the annuls of Brit Art. Beryl Cook continues to color and has just recently moved from Plymouth, to Bristol to get close to her folks.
I first remember painting 'Dr Who' characters at playschool when I was just about 4 years old. I can recall drawing alongside my Pa , who as a reasonable artist himself was the first to influence me.
Together we drew pages and pages of racing automobiles and steam trains which was Mummy that commented on how good mine were. I would also spend hours at a time modelling with plasticine and mechano. At about the same time we'd visit my granny, together with 5 cousins, on a Sun. afternoon. She had a pretty giant piano in her front room and, after my cousins had finished smacking away at the keys, I'd stay behind and see which notes sounded good together.
Having recognized my inventive and musical capabilities at that age my folks gave me each support and motivation I wanted to pursue them. When the point came to go to college I used to be a disinclined pupil. I felt different to the other children and I didn't like the ritual or structure of it all. Unsurprisingly the sole subjects that I did well at were art and music. Initially I thought I'd make a vocation as a concert pianist, and then I began to think perhaps I'd become a rock star, but fortunately I ultimately settled on becoming an artist.
My art teacher at the time however considered it a 'silly notion' and maintained that I should attend art-college to try a course in design. It wasn't what I needed to do and I spent more time lurking around the local Ferrari dealership painting exotic and classic vehicles.
I lived in expectations that one of the numerous rich and celebrated buyers would commission me to color an image of their automobile. Sadly it wasn't to be! Roughly 1/2 way thru the course I determined to give up as it wasn't for me. After that I dabbled around in a selection of activities, earning a bit of money painting peoples's pets, playing the piano in the bars, clubs and cocktail bars, and I even spent a high season entertaining people at one of the infamous Butlins Vacation Camps.
It was not till the autumn of 1997 that I went professional, dedicating for the 1st time ever, all of my energy into my art. I held a major one-man retrospective exhibition in the summertime of 1998 titled 'All in a Life's Work', which was a private choice of paintings representing my creative journey. This inventive exhibition also featured a live performance by rock star Steve Harley, who has enjoyed major success, including the classic No.
One 'Make Me Grin ( Come up and see me ) '. I've always found inspiration thru words and music and the creativeness and poetic quality of Steve Harley's music has strongly influenced my inventive development. I'm honored and happy that such a proficient and uplifing figure like Steve has supported my work over so many years. 'The Journeyman' was the first of my paintings to mix a personality inside a street scene. This has been responsible for a new kind of subject material based primarily on street life, whether reflecting everyday events or capturing the nostalgia of an industrial age.
I love to think there's a piquancy and spirit inside these works. Being raised in Birmingham in the 60s and 70s has given me so many memories to draw on ; it has given me my identity and working class ethic. The working man in my economic street scenes is a classic figure reflecting the commercial age, nevertheless it may be in any town or any city. I travelled at length across the U.K. For the bulk of 2002. My 'Homes & Hearts' tour launched my work to several studios across the land, it was a conclusive pleasure to meet so many glorious folk, they are now a fine source of inspiration to me. I'm consistently pushing myself in new and thrilling directions.
As well as my drawing and painting I also lecture art to disadvantaged students based in the community. This is a challenging and rewarding addition to my hectic life and an opportunity for me to give something back.
Born in Coventry, and educated at the the Town of Coventry Boarding College , Paul left college at sixteen so as to train as a neophyte draughtsman. Pauls first love however is, and has always been, painting. Actually on leaving college he told falsehoods about his age and entered the Herbert Art Gallerys open exhibition for aged 18 and over, in Coventry. Even at this tender age he had 2 of his 3 works accepted, one of which was singled out for certain praise by the then Lord Mayor of Birmingham. Paul attempted to further his education by taking night college classes, to study art as an A-level. This was to be transitive as, by the 3rd lesson, the art teacher had given up, informing Paul that he ought to be teaching the class, not studying in it. Having completed his tutelage, Paul went to work planning graphics for a video unit, which then progressed to planning graphics for giant conferences which had the extra virtue of travel, taking him across the world, from Europe to Japan.
Though Paul enjoyed his work, he didn't enjoy the strains that went with it , for example the commuting and cut offs. He felt like he was watching his life vanish when there were such a lot of other items that he would have liked to do. This is not really surprising when he informs us that except for painting, he's obsessive about making models out of Fimo, and wood carving. He has just achieved one of his great ambitions, which was to color a big wall decoration of badgers onto the side of his Warwickshire home, for which he got the blessing of the other citizens and council authorization.
His long-term target is to buy and convert an old barn. Most significantly he's following a job as an artist. Bearing that in mind, he paid a visit to the Spring Fair at the NEC in pursuit of a publisher and was gratified to come away with one or two of the major publishers fascinated by his work.
He's now been making a living from his photographs since the middle of 1997 having joined with Sally Mitchell Fine humanities who released his first 3 prints in October 1997, to substantial success.
1998 was a great year for him with the releasing of another five prints in the spring, all becoming hot sellers. This is no accident, and it's not just down to raw talent with which he's well endowed. Paul is industrious, and a realist. He understands that great art isn't made overnite, and that simply making a pretty picture isn't really enough. Nice things are prepared to come from this artist! 1999 saw his first major sell out, 'Dog Tyred ' which went in a quarter.
As the Sixties swung and Britain subverted the old order, cameraman Philip Townsend was there to record all the prime folks of the time, stunning and vile alike : the debs and their beaux, louche lords and club owners, press barons and business moguls, stars and socialites, artists and creatives, royals and thugs, and above all of the new noblemen of pop and rock, lead by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Phenomenally , Townsend's whole photographic career precisely spanned that most noteworthy of decades, when London was the coolest of capital towns.
He took his first significant footage in 1960 then, in 1970, he put away his cameras for good and casually consigned his photos to a cupboard. It was only in the recent past when he looked at them seriously again, that he found a half-forgotten treasure trove ; a time capsule that vividly resurrects those photogenic times. The saved works are now asked for by mags and newspapers internationally, by studios like the State Portrait Studio , and by collectors across the world. The rationale is straightforward : Philip Townsend's photos are the Sixties. While other photographers took portraits, regularly closely cropped, Townsend spontaneously dilated his frame to incorporate backgrounds, landscapes and the sheer feel of the period.
A wonderful example is his portfolio of the Rolling Stones, including their first picture sessions, when they were broke and hungry, without a recording contract, a band not yet on the run. Townsend acquired them grilled chickens and set about fostering the semi-delinquent image which they continue to cultivate today.
They say that while the Beatles, whom Townsend also snapped in their first flush of celebrity, were bad boys turned good thru the influence of their late chief Brian Epstein, the Stones were goodies who became stage baddies. Their first executive, Andrew Loog Oldham, whom Philip had met as a young chancer on the waterfront in Monte Carlo, was grooming an unknown group for mega stardom and required an image-maker to make the dream occur. The group was the Rolling Stones, and his passing was to cause them to look "cruel, troublesome and streetwise". Townsend's inventive photographs haven't ever been bettered. He moved easily into the nascent arena of rock, snapping the Beatles many times
I can never remember a point when I didn't enjoy some type of creativeness ; I gawk on my youth with a great sense of liking and casting backwards I realize why my love affair with painting will never end. Born in the tiny city of Mansfield, Nottinghamshire my earliest memory is of a present one Xmas that made my life different. It had been a little book of black and white illustrations ; the book was called 'The Wizardry Painter ' and came with a paintbrush but no paints. To this day I recall the actual feeling I had when I realised this was extremely special book indeed, you 'painted ' the pages with water and the colors magically appeared - I was hooked! Clinging to this feeling I wanted others to share in my awe so I started painting in earnest.
I can recollect having a little watercolour paint set which I took everywhere. Moggies , dogs and folk were all painted in the same simplified form although it was colors and shapes that fascinated me and pretty often my attempts degenerated into swirls of colour which I now understand was the beginning of my art education. On the way many things added to my development, one or two years as a surveyor gave accuracy, a PC programmer added a systematic approach and a graphic artist in the clothes business put the last piece of the jigsaw together and gave me an appreciation of color and composition, so in some tiny way all of them assisted in shaping my style and in turn my future. 2 years gone I chose to return seriously back to painting, something that had been delegated to a part-time hobby, inside a few weeks the fervour I worried might have dampened was still there - brighter and more overwhelming than previously. In 2005 I satisfied a lifetime dream when I was offered the opportunity to work with Washington Green and in the few months I've been with them I will feel my potential expanding miles beyond my imagination.
Was born in Bournemouth, Dorset on the 25th March 1970 and have lived inside ten miles of my birthplace all my life. I can't recollect precisely when it was, but I'm aware that I was really young when I initially began studying how to draw. Detail was always my thing ; if my drawing failed to look like the object or scene I was having a look at then I'd find it a most angering experience.
In my latest work I have finally escaped those shackles and it has been an extremely pleasurable and liberating experience ; it's only now I ultimately feel just like the artist I'd always wished to become. The journey here has been an up and back down one and on occasions a genuine struggle. After I left college I applied to art varsity and was accepted, but in the final analysis I had to turn it down and this is where my art career stopped for the moment. I would be coaching to be a technical illustrator, but with hindsight I believe it was good that I did not pursue that type of painting as within just a few years computers would have taken over and making technical illustrations by hand would not have been in demand.
For the following thirteen years I worked at an engineering firm and painted in the evenings. It was while working there that I met a girl called Sara who went on to become my better half and she has been a total rock in my life and certainly helped me get to where I am today. After we got married Sara conceived and it became clear she had a rare blood disorder which would lead her to keep having miscarriages.
With the mysteries of modern medicine there had been a way around this issue and we presently have 2 superb children.
One week after the birth of our first kid Sara had come off the medicine that had kept the baby alive and made the birth possible but stopping the medicine made her have a massive stroke. My life went into chaos, in the coming weeks I had fully accepted that I might never become an artist and I was preparing myself to taking care of Sara for the remainder of my years. The gods must've been looking down on us though as she seemed to make a complete recovery and 5 weeks later came home from hospice to be brought back together with our new baby. It took many weeks before Sara was like her old self again and 4 years on we did a crazy thing and had another baby. Sara is on permanent medicine now and the threat of a stroke going down again is seriously reduced and the second birth went according to plan.
An event like that truly opens your eyes - it definitely did ours and now if we have got a call to make we just do it, life is much too short not to. One of those life-changing choices came in 2002 when the engineering firm I was working for offered the likelihood of voluntary redundancies. I put my name forward and was accepted. The plan was to utilize the redundancy money and live off that for a year while I just painted and painted. It is a huge bet as we have 2 kids to feed.
Nigel Hemming is definitely one of the country's most successful animal artists.
Born in 1957 in Staffordshire, his career has been well documented with transition thru the media of watercolour, acrylic, pastel, and ultimately oil. Though he at first saw himself as a wildlife artist - ornithological subjects holding a specific obsession for him - it is painting of dogs - especially working dogs - with which his name has become associated. The connection between man and dog provides a never ending source of inspiration for his work. Existing with his own dogs made Nigel an eager observer of dog behavior and his pictures reflect this deep appreciation of his subject.
Advocates find his paintings impossible to resist - seeing plenty of their own special animal's enchanting features caught on canvas. Nigel Hemming works have been made public in limited run form since the mid 1980's, enjoying increasing recognition with each new edition. His printed works and original paintings have featured in one-man shows as well as numerous shared exhibitions.
His work is picked up across the U.K, Europe, and the U.S.A. Then in 1986 he had his first work released by Washington Green, a collection of four gun dogs, which proved highly well-liked worldwide. This subsequently led on to more prints and a natural progression into top quality limited editions.
Irrespective of what kind of dog he portrays, the personality and likeness of the dog are always glorious. Plenty of his works have been reproduced as restricted edition prints and he's been voted four times, in the Fine Art Trade Guild survey, as one of the top selling artists, eventually wining it in 1998. Born in 1959 in Dagenham, Essex. His pa teaches and interprets the deaf and dumb language for the police.
He was educated at the Robert Clock school which was here that he won his first exhibition at the age of 7. On leaving college he trained as a cupboard maker before signing up in the division for 3 years. There, amongst other things, he probably did a 6 month tour in Northwards Ireland. After the army he spent half a year working as a motor cycle messenger in London, earning himself enough funds to spend one or two months touring Europe.
All though all this time his keenness for drawing grew stronger and on returning from Europe he spent half a year sketching peoples's kids on the pavements of Covent Garden, in pastel at £3 a time. From here a London silversmith employed him to design silverware, mostly for the Arab market. But interesting as this was, it wasn't Mick's great eagerness and before exceedingly long he moved away from London and spent the subsequent 3 years living in a tiny cottage on a farm in Burnham-on-Crouch and returned to selling his work on the streets, though this time his price had gone up to £18 a drawing. In spite of his price increase he couldn't make a living and as a consequence he began to paint seriously in oils in the early part of 1987.
By the middle of 1987 he'd been discovered by Sally Mitchell and by the end of the present year he had his first 2 restricted edition prints broadcast after his work. He hasn't ever looked back and 13 years on, the Summer of two thousand saw the publication of his 300th seriously successful, restricted edition print. This isn't to say the 90 and pictures that've been reproduced as successful greetings cards and the dozen or so open edition prints, all after his work. He was featured by Gundogs mag in 1996 as one of the number one dog artists. Later on in the year one of his photographs was featured on the cover of this mag.
More lately he has recieved features in 'Countrymans Weekley','Sporting Gun ' and 'Deerstalking Mag ' the 1st time he exhibited at the Society of Equestrian Artists in London, with only the second pony picture he had ever painted, he won the prize for the best noob.
This modern collection of 'Power Flowers' from prize-winning artist Mark Wilson is a bold and energetic group of works certain to be a colourful focus for any modern house.
Hailing from Sheffield, Mark Wilson was introduced to art while very young, having grown up in a place full of fine art prints and original paintings, he attended his very first art exhibition at the tender age of five, an event that was to persuade his life. In his teens, Mark won many an Art competition, including a challenge in cooperation with the Yorkshire Post and the RAF, with five of his paintings being selected for an exhibition at the Finningley Air Show.
In the latter 70's Mark went on to study Art at Hull College of Art where he got a qualification in Fine Art Painting. Mark lived in Hull for nine years working next to a grouping of artists who would frequently play a role in exchange shows with other artists from all over the world, significantly Japan, Holland and the United States.
I never thought about chasing a vocation as an artist, although I come from an Anglo - Italian family, the majority of whom are artists or designers.
Art was my best subject at college and I won many local and state art competitions. When I came to leave college, I did not truly have an idea about what I would have liked to do for a vocation. Thanks to the fact I was good at sciences, I ended up studied engineering and started on a job in vehicle design and engineering for fifteen years.
In many ways I had my 'dream job ', because I adore autos and worked on new product ideas for some of the finest brands on the planet. But I mostly had a robust feeling this was not my trail in life and I should be doing something more creative - but I did not know what. I have always had an interest in music and enjoyed playing keyboards and guitar for a few years. At one stage I considered the concept of working in the music business as a studio engineer or producer, which would mix my creative talents with my technical talents. But I felt trapped by the standing of a good job.
I could not face the concept of re-training and beginning all over again from scratch in a better career, with no cash to pay the bills. In 1999, I was introduced to glass making through a buddy. I felt truly impressed and purchased a little test kiln, which I installed in a spare room and started to try experimenting with, learning the mandatory abilities from books and info online.
At the time, there were some kiln-fused glass artists in England and it's a very niche process. It took tons of research to source the obligatory tools and materials from various corporations based across the entire world. I appeared to have a natural capability to make glass and made a decision to take a chance and leave my job to line up a glass design business. I realized that there had been a big commercial opportunity to employ the process to provide modern glass wall tiling, which weren't generally available in the United Kingdom at the time. Though there were 1 or 2 raised eyebrows, my call paid off. Inside a year my start up business was booming. I had set up a workshop and was supplying major high st retail chains with my glass tile designs for loos and kitchens.
Linda Jane Smith has always loved drawing and, as a kid, entered as many art competitions as she could.
She at last studied graphic designing at Bournville University of Art, which gave her the facility to use discipline to work awfully exactly, and, the confidence to settle down anywhere to color. Her work has progressed significantly since that time, permitting her to blend the 2 great loves of her life, moggies and painting. There has often been a family moggy in her life and these days her tortoiseshell cat, Jessie, regularly pops into the studio for a little 'chat' before returning to sleep on the bed.
Her work has been heavily influenced by the concept of using fine detail in design ; illustrators like Arthur Rackham and Nicola Bailey, who are known to use wonderful detail in their work, are her faves. To be in a position to look at a picture and keep finding objects - perhaps a ladybug, or a leaf, or a glass bead, is what she adores. From the reaction of adults and children who've seen her work, it appears to have a commonly joyous effect.
Linda Jane Smith is an ardent collector of all sorts of old objects including hat-pins, china and fabrics - all of these are seen as treasures to her and regularly turn up in her paintings. A cat sitting on a faded Persian rug with a dog-eared "Beano" comic lying next to it'll summon up memories of infancy for most. Humour is a very sizeable part of her work. She's employed with designer gouache, in a Pointillist style, making an exhaustive drawing first, then carefully putting on dots of paint to slowly build up the color in order that it has form and texture. Her colors are typically deep and richfaded carpets, velvet cushions and frayed brocades are everywhere.
Linda Jane Smith has always loved drawing and, as a kid, entered as many art competitions as she could. She ultimately studied graphic designing at Bournville School of Art, which gave her the facility to use discipline to work terribly exactly, and also, the confidence to settle down anywhere to color.
Her work has progressed significantly since that time, permitting her to mix the 2 great loves of her life, cats and painting. There has often been a family cat in her life and nowadays her tortoiseshell pussy-cat, Jessie, regularly pops into the studio for a small 'chat' before returning to sleep on the bed. Her work has been heavily influenced by the concept of using fine detail in design ; illustrators like Arthur Rackham and Nicola Bailey, who are known to use wonderful detail in their work, are her faves.
To be in a position to look at a picture and keep finding objects - perhaps a ladybug, or a leaf, or a glass bead, is what she loves. From the reaction of kids and grownups who've seen her work, it appears to have a generally joyous effect. Linda Jane Smith is an ardent collector of all sorts of old objects including hat-pins, china and fabrics - all of these are seen as treasures to her and frequently turn up in her paintings. A pussy sitting on a faded Persian rug with a dog-eared "Beano" comic lying next to it'll summon up memories of adolescence for most.
Humour is a significant part of her work.
She's employed with designer gouache, in a Pointillist style, making an exhaustive drawing first, then scrupulously putting on dots of paint to slowly build up the color so it has form and texture. Her colors are typically deep and richfaded carpets, velvet cushions and frayed brocades are everywhere.
Kerry Darlington is now recognised as one of the United Kingdom's top artists and named runner up in the Art Guilds top selling Revealed artist award Her work continues to develop, and she's now experimenting with figurative oil paintings, using her modern style alongside pragmatic figure painting and portraits and provoked by the Pre-Raphaelite period, the cultured movement and Art Nouveau.
Kerry Darlington was born in 1974 on a coastal city of North Wales, the talent of Kerry Darlington was powered by a love for pretty old picture books ( Rackham, Dulac and Beardsley were her tops ), which turned into a qualification in illustration in 1996. Kerry Darlington worked for a number of years with line drawings and watercolour, diversifying as she became more assured with color. She currently works with a spread of mediums, acrylic and oil. Her acrylic paintings are uniquely formed on board or canvas first, using texture and gessos.
The color is then built on in layers to make depth.
Her abstract pieces were at first based on satellite pictures of Earth which made the 'Volcanic ' Collection in 2005 / 2006. This has since then diversified to incorporate up to date landscapes and figure-work, all carrying her special style.