Jackson’s Open Art Prize Shortlist Announced

The judges have selected the short-listed artworks for the Jackson’s Open Art Prize.

The Jackson’s Open Art Prize had a huge response with 3100 artists submitting their drawings, paintings and prints.  After much deliberation the Jackson’s panel selected 410 for a long-list of really excellent work that was announced 15th April.  As the next step of the selection process our panel of six expert judges have now chosen their favourites from that list creating a short-list of 54 artworks that are shown below. Congratulations to all the artists whose work was selected for the short-list! They have been emailed with the good news.

The Panel of Judges

The judges are: painter and gallery director Carlos de Lins, artist and head printmaking tutor Hillary Daltry, painter and tutor Hugo Grenville, artist and freelance journalist James Hobbs, artist and winner of the BBC Big Painting Challenge Paul Bell, and artist and curator Sarah Sparkes.  You can read more about the judges in their earlier interviews on the Jackson’s blog.

The judges found it a difficult process to chose because the standard of all the works was so high.

James Hobbs: ‘Not an easy task! I’ve spent quite some time going through them all several times. There is some great work in there but some doesn’t always show at its best on a screen, I think. I hope that between all the judges we won’t let anything outstanding slip by.’

Carlos De Lins: ‘I started looking at first the overall impact of the image in relation to its subject matter, then materials & technique, then subject matter again in relation to composition.’

The Next Step

It will now be the judges’ task to choose the three winning entries which will be announced on 13th May. However we would like you to get involved, too! You can vote for your favourite artwork by an artist who identified themselves as an amateur – the winner of the Amateur Prize will receive £600 worth of Jackson’s Gift Vouchers. To make voting fair we are using the Facebook login system, so you will need to be logged in to vote. Vote for as many as you admire, but no more than one vote per artwork. Voting closes midnight Thursday 12th May.

Vote now

‘Fiona’ by Timothy Patrick

Portrait of the artist’s former landlady in Clapham, a painter in her own time also.

Medium: Charcoal on Paper

Size: 58x77cm

Website: www.timpatrick.co.uk

‘Brighton Tryptich’ by Jennifer Beresford

Brighton Hove and surrounding area showing iconic buildings and places of importance to people of Brighton.

Medium: Acrylic on canvas

Size: 7’x4′

‘Guzowato’ by Justyna Adamczyk

I have proven to be an artist with an unusually deep consciousness and with great willpower to create.To describe my art with a classic definition of painting would not be enough. One of the reasons is that I usee a variety of media which mix together. I correctly draw conclusions from those experiments and implements them into my work.Distinct, organic spots of paint which create discreet physiological allusions, splash and splatter in various proportions on the unprimed, fine cotton canvas changing the work into a piece of art which becomes a place of nearly per formative action.

My language can be gentle and full of allusions as well as very literal. My painting proves that art is not about building forms, but rather about showing the forces which govern them.

When it comes to the composition, I often choose one dominant element, a form, which take on all the impact and draws attention to itself. The way it is constructed and positioned among other elements conveys a strong desire to explain all doubts.

Sometimes, there are many ‘dominating’ elements, but they do not compete with each other thanks to clear rules of hierarchy. My works communicate a difficult range of topics such as feminism, sexuality, the existence of a relationship with myself and with the world.

Medium: acrylic on canvas

Size: 80×80

Website: www.justynaadamczyk.com

‘Evening Light on Koasarn Road’ by Nipon Parinyapunno

Come across this scene by chance when I was riding bike pass Koasarn Road. I normally wofk in watercolor but the stunning light sure would make a good subject for acrylic. I apply very tick gesso on masonite board using roller, as a result it creates a beautiful texture and brcome character of this painting.

Medium: Acrylic

Size: 30×22 cm

Website: tonyohart.blogspot.com

‘leaf and shell’ by Robert Mcpartland

Two contrasting qualities, finely balanced. My work is in the vanitas still life tradition. I use observation and metaphor to reveal the particular and universal simultaneously.

Medium: oil on canvas

Size: 60 x 60 cm

Website: www.robertmcpartland.com

‘Gorge’ by Max Naylor

One of a series of paintings made in response to walking through the landscape using a combination of memory and imagination.

Medium: Ink on Paper

Size: 660x1016mm

Website: www.maxnaylor.com

‘The High Season’ by Paul Smith

My work documents my interest in the lost and the found, what is passing out of memory and what is synthesized as trace in the landscape. Exploring lost places and capturing the essence of a moment of abandonment has been part of my practice since my earliest work, photographing the post-industrial landscape of my native North East. More recently I have used these explorations of localities on the verge of returning to unofficial wilderness in dialogue with found material. Working between these two sources has informed a broader turn in my works to consider layerings and cuttings: the process of collage by which territory is shaped into landscape by human action.

Medium: Oil on Canvas

Size: 100 x 80 cm

Website: www.paulsmithart.co.uk

‘Pamela Newel Sellers’ by Leslie Watts

Portrait painting

Medium: Egg Tempera on Panel

Size: 30 x 30cm

Website: http://www.lesliewatts.ca/

‘Relativity II’ by Linda Swann

I painted this a few years ago but it is one of my favourites. It is one of a pair but each stands equally well on its own. The image appears as a series of layers, all interacting with each other in a kind of dance. The viewer needs time for this interplay to work well, as slight shifts in visual perception change the appearance of the image to the observer. I am interested in so-called ‘non-linearity’ and ‘self-organizing dynamics’ found in chaos theory and try to apply these concepts to my paintings.

Medium: acrylic on primed board backed by a supporting frame

Size: 80cm x 80cm

Website: www.lindaswannpaintings.com

‘Go Gentle, Portrait of Kurt Wu’ by Keiran Chang

To my dearest friend, do not go gentle into that good night.

Medium: Oil on board

Size: 55 x 55 cm

Website: www.facebook.com/keirchang

‘The Dressmaker’ by Tony Luciani

As a young boy, I would often bring my homework down to the basement sewing room. There, my Mom would be stitching and mending clothes for the family with help from her industrial, factory sewing machine. I would cuddle up on an over-stuffed recliner and listen to the humming of the huge motor as I did my reading. I felt protected. When Mom’s house was sold, I salvaged the old Singer machine. A few months ago, I heard that same hum coming from my studio late one night. I quietly went downstairs and saw Mom sewing away. For a moment I re-lived my childhood memories. I felt like a kid. I read for a while beside her.

Medium: oil on canvas

Size: 122 x 132 cm

Website: www.tonyluciani.ca

‘Saint John’s Fire’ by Ros Faram

Saint John’s Day is at Midsummer, traditionally a time to celebrate the full-blooming of the Earth and humanity. The fire eats up the negative traits that impede us from reaching our full potential. As the fire dies down, we take courage and jump over the flames, baptized by fire, hopefully reborn…
This watercolour painting touches on these themes. I like that such lofty ideas can be successfully untied with the quite banal surroundings of an ordinary back-garden, where I made the painting. Wherever there is Nature we can find magic.

Medium: Watercolour and silver leaf on cotton rag paper.

Size: A3

Website: www.rosfaram.com

‘House (2)’ by Jarik Jongman

Exploring a fascination with man-made structures and interiors,my earlier
paintings of motel rooms or abandoned factories allude to the transience of
existence and could be viewed as an allegory of the temporary dwelling
place.
Currently, I am focusing on modernist architecture. These buildings and
villas whose significance has been expanded, from functionality into an
iconic and symbolic status, I portray as sublime, transcendental structures,
both coveted and threatened by inscrutable and ominous forces.

Medium: oil on canvas

Size: 60 x 70 cm

Website: www.jarikjongman.nl

‘The cupboard’ by Gonzalo Rodríguez

Part of my work is about small memory. Large memory is recorded in books and small memory is all about little things; trivial, jokes. That small memory is what makes people different from one another, unique. So, it came out of being in the studio, I was working on different single objects, like still-life, chairs or clothes, and then I saw that they had the possibility of living together as opposed to standing on their own. If somebody took all the objects, and all of the beds, and everything out, you might end up with something.

Medium: Oil on canvas

Size: 73×100 cms.

Website: http://gonzbelmez.wix.com/gonzalorodriguez#!

‘Sanctuary’ by Simon Brewster

A heavy, found plywood panel is loosely painted white, then given a thin skin of paraffin wax.  Graphite powder is gently rubbed over the wax and fixed.
The drawing is made by scoring into this surface, using various tools (like a blunt penknife).  The image alludes to a hilltop crowned with Scots Pines – real pine needles are bedded into a recess across the panel. The entire piece is box-framed.

Medium: Organic material, graphite powder, wax, acrylic paint on a found, distressed plywood panel

Size: 25 x 27 x 2.5cm unframed

Website: www.simonbrewsterart.com

‘remains of a sunken ship’ by HORACIO CARRENA

This work arises from the combination of various signs taken from the ancient peoples who lived in South America. My work is based on this. My idea is to create a new work guiding me by these images.

Medium: Acrylic on canvas

Size: 60 cm x 60 cm

Website: www.carrena1291.wix.com/plastic-artist

‘Moon Shadow’ by Bev Lewis

Pencil drawing of horse’s head using stark contrast and mounted on cradled board.

Medium: Graphite pencil and graphite block

Size: 38cmsx38cms

Website: http://bevlewis-art.blogspot.co.uk/

‘Marta and Paulina’ by Hero Johnson

This is a painting of two friends, Marta and Paulina. They are both from Poland orignially, but from different areas and didn’t know each other before moving to London. Paulina is an artist and Marta is a food stylist. I started the painting last summer and finished it in February of this year.

Medium: Oil on canvas

Size: 100cm x 80cm

‘Mole Skins’ by Pamela Holstein 

The moles were printed using the card dry point technique, they were then cut to shape. Each mole has a swig tag attached to it’s leg stamped with a number from 1 to 50. They are then pinned, using round headed map pins in rows with their tags hanging loose.

The use of pins for attaching the moles is a reference to specimen pins, the tags on the legs, a reference to the cataloguing process in museums. The inspiration for the piece was a collection of moleskins owned by a nineteenth century collector. My work is about animals and how humans treat them as commodities, in this case, all those lives lost, just some someone could own a collection of moleskins.

Medium: Drypoint and stamp prints on tags

Size: 53 cm x 53 cm

Website: www.wirralsocietyarts.org/gallery/pamela-holstein

‘Spanish Olives Groves – Los Juncares 2015’ by Leo Davey

This depiction of a vast landscape, unusually, has detail in mid and background and is abstracted in the foreground. Vigorous mark making of the foliage in the wild foreground foliage is contrasted against the very ordered rows of trees throughout the mid and background.

Medium: Watercolour and Oil (mixed media)

Size: 30 x 60 cms – that’s the painting size. Frame is approx 50 x 80 cms (4 cms deep)

‘Song lines’ by Anna Shutt

The surrounding landscape here in Wiltshire has provided the inspiration for this work, that maps out my experience of the land.

Medium: Mixed media on canvas on board

Size: 40X40cm

‘Wiltshire Cul-de-sac’ by Carole Tonge

During last year I became fascinated with the construction of the new higher education college round the corner from where I live. I made hundreds of drawings, filling sketchbooks with images of the cranes and people moving across the site. Working from these drawings back in my studio I think this painting tells the story of the construction. Acrylic was the perfect medium to use and by applying the paint in unconventional ways I think this painting captures the colours and textures of the place.

Medium: Acrylic

Size: 82cm x 43cm

Website: www.caprintmaker.co.uk

‘La Femme aux Chardons’ by Sharron Astbury-Petit

‘La Femme aux Chardons’ (Woman with Thistles) is a large-format, mixed media painting on a poplar plywood panel. It is painted in acrylic with over-drawing and shading in graphite and coloured pencil. For the figure’s skin, the poplar panel’s surface is left exposed and unpainted, shaded only with graphite to leave the grain of the wood apparent. The textile texture of the pillows has been acheived by pressing lace into the wet acrylic and then removing it once dry and over-shading the area with graphite.

This painting was inspired by Charles Perrault’s allegorical tale ‘La Belle au Bois Dormant’ and is part of a series exploring what it is to be a woman, using wood as a metaphor for the tender yet indomitable female spirit.

Medium:  Acrylic, graphite and coloured pencil on poplar plywood panel

Size: 107 x 141 cm

Website: http://www.sharronastbury-petit.com/

‘Invocation’ by John Brennan

Invocation – an act of prayer or summoning – This piece has undergone many transformations during the course of the painting process, I gradually became intrigued by the notion that the child could either be calling forth an unseen power or entity, or that she is in fact the entity that has been called forth by an unseen hand.

Medium: Oil on canvas

Size: 100 x 100 x 4cm

Website: www.johnbrennan.co.uk

‘Quantized Crackles of Emotional Scales’ by Ryota Matsumoto

The artworks of Ryota Matsumoto develop and demonstrate the spatio-temporal conditions of our ever-evolving urban and ecological environments, which could be attributed to multitudes of spatial practices constructed by different societies. They are created to act as the catalyst for defining speculative changes in notions of cities, socities and cultures. Essentially, the work facilitates a reciprocal dialogue among those multifaceted realms in the morphological nature of constantly shifting topography and geology.
The drawings explore the hybrid technique combining both traditional media (ink, acrylic, and graphite) and digital media (algorithmic processing, scripting and image compositing with custom software ).
The varying scale, juxtaposition of different forms, intertwined textures, variations in patterns and visual metamorphoses are employed as the multi-layered drawing methodologies to question the nature of representation in the context of non-Euclidean morphological configuration.

Medium: Mixed Media

Size: 24inx38in

Website: http://ryotamatsumotostudio.blogspot.com

‘Deep purple’ by Greg O’Leary

Painted from two lisianthus flowers.

Medium: Oil on canvas

Size: 120 x 180 cm

Website: www.gregoleary.com.au

‘La Alhambra’ by Angela Carol Robertson

The moorish castle in Granada

Medium: Aqua oils

Size: 80cm x 40cm

‘A-diccion’ by Paula Nahmod

The movement in the cities is constant, graffities, publicity signs, neon lights, people transportation below and beneath the pavement, patterns…their repetition, accumulation, superposition, generates visual saturation in different scales. The velocity in which we move everyday generates a memory of several images that we decodify according to our own experience of urban life. In my paintings I am interested on expressing my own chaotic sensation of the metropolis.

Medium: Acrylic on canvas

Size: 78″ x 78″

Website: Paulanahmod.blogspot.com.ar

‘Revolution is an Art Found in the History of Love’ by Chris Anthem

The painting set out to be direct, no more than the sum of its parts: a child, udder cow presence, orange, a suckling calf. No absence to which the painted elements suggest. Half playful/half imbecilic. I started it in Beirut. I was raising a one year old in Beirut waiting for ISIS to reach the Mediterranean. Observing him absorbed in transforming whatever comes to hand into his imaginary world. A play of hide and seek with the thing as it disappears into meaning and back out again. That passing skill we loose. I finished the painting in Bath UK, colour became important, maybe it was the depth of winter, some quality of light that I was lacking. Something only successive layers of paint would salve.

Medium: oil on canvas

Size: 101cm x 77cm

Website: www.chrisanthem.co.uk

‘Dorothea’s Apple Tree’ by Charlie Kirkham

Black ink and acrylic paint marker on paper, drawing depicting the legend of Saint Dorethea as part of a series exploring mythology and trees.

Medium: Ink & Acrylic Paint Pen

Size: 110 x 110 cm

Website: www.charliekirkham.com

‘Jackie Kennedy Falling out a Pram’ by David Tweedy

The 1960’s remains the epitome of change and style within culture and political society and overwhelmingly, for me deals in the currency of highly emotive iconic imagery. It compels me to ask why we don’t change and continue to look at this period. I wanted to frame the moment of Kennedy’s death captured on the Zapruder film and locate it within a recognisable environment of 1960’s cartoons. The colour, so often viewed begins to suggest the event itself and offers the opportunity to replace form. Icons of childhood merge with their steely political counterparts and co exist through memory and constant revisit through the prism of early colour TV. An assassination somehow becomes stylish and belongs to a world inhabited by the iconography of The Pink Panther, Captain Kirk and Mrs Peel. Other elements of 60’s style whether Pop; the bubblegum pink and cartoon clunkiness of Philip Guston or general design aesthetics of the period collide and contribute. The forms suggest potential conclusions but carry a degree of uncertainty. The pram and cartoon aesthetic speak of perceived security, innocence and nostalgia. Whether societal or individual reverie the painting explores the reduction of history into populist entertainment and far from basking in the glow of a safe environment the scene depicts the bloody aftermath of violent death. The force of this recognition hopefully propels the funeral procession into speedy hilarity and comic vulgarity and threatens to career off course as it hurtles through a featureless cartoon loop towards some conclusion. Jackie remains trapped beneath the outline of horrified spectator or thought bubble, muses in stylised restraint whilst we lose sight of the original. With no finishing line in sight the race and our fascination goes on.

Medium: Oil on canvas

Size: 165 cm x 185 cm

Website: http://www.aestheticamagazine.com/insight-work-david-tweedy-longlisted-artist-aesthetica-art-prize/

‘Now and forever until the end of time’ by Paula MacArthur

Still Light by Graham Crowley
Paula MacArthur’s paintings are a testimony to the primacy of vision. Light is not only the subject matter and content of Paula MacArthur’s luminous and rather exquisite paintings but it’s also their medium. Paula’s paintings draw us into the now. For most of us; light can be many things, but for Paula; it’s a celebration of the senses and an affirmation of values. This isn’t simply a celebration of light but of life. The key to this sort of achievement is transformation. This is one of the principle elements that distinguish painting from illustration. This is the transformation from paint into light and space. A kind of latter day alchemy. Paula’s paintings demonstrate that to paint about love – you have to paint lovingly; otherwise simply depicting acts of tenderness becomes illustration. It’s no coincidence that Paula employs a method that eschews easy and mannered expressionistic rhetoric. Her recent work is closer in method to the meticulous paintings of Chuck Close. For her a sense of precision is essential. Light not only functions as space in painting but it can also lend the painting, what has been described as ‘air’. Air in this context is the imagined space in which events ‘unfold’. This is space as light and light as space. This is pictorial space; indeterminate and fictitious. This is the legacy of cubism. Paula also employs reflection and refraction to compress several shattered and partial spaces into one fictitious ‘event’. Diamonds are complex and contradictory objects. There are few artefacts that are as demonised and fetishised as diamonds. Fewer still are as intimately bound to ideas of transformation and energy. The list of diamond’s distant and not-so-distant ‘cousins’ is impressive. Whether it be a life forms like us; a sack of coal or a stick of graphite. Diamonds represent a massive contradiction and like fire, they have the potential to be both fascinating and dangerous. Simultaneously beguiling and deadly.

Medium: Oil on canvas

Size: 200 x 300cm

Website: www.paula-macarthur.com

‘Espera’ by Raúl Álvarez

This work is and underwater wiew of an a surfist wait the perfect wave.
I interesting in two planes in this work,the realistic of a human figure and other “abstract” to the reflects from the water.I think this duality is very interesting and dinamyc.

Medium: Acrylic on canvas

Size: 140×140 cms

Website: www.raulalvarezpintura.com

‘american summer 2013’ by neale howells

its surprising that artwork is really about size and impact.. well why shouldn’t it be when its main competition is cinema.. so that’s what I like to do.. grab the viewers attention.. draw them in like the first five minutes of a film and keep them there hopefully with them seeing better and different things.. how do we judge good art..? well perhaps its how many times we come back to view it…

Medium: acrylic oil pastel pencil wood

Size: 8ft x 12ft

Website: www.artistnealehowells.webs.com

‘Beautiful Ugliness’ by Valerie Savchits

I was born and raised in a post-soviet society in which I learned how to appreciate beauty and strive for harmony. However, any disproportionality or deviation from established norms within existing ideologies in our community was absolutely invaluable and unacceptable. My recent work explores the way of moving from aesthetically beautiful art to ugly art. It strikes me that one of the key problems for acknowledging ugliness as a relevant standard of today’s art is inability to involve our subjectivity and personal attitudes in order to understand it. My concern is that ugliness should not be ignored anymore as it reflects the truth. Figurative art enables me to engage with symbolism in the same way as abstract art engages with intense subjectivity. Guided by the Dada, trans avant-garde, abstract expressionism and neoexpressionism I started to see the beauty in ugliness by adding mistakes and imperfections to my paintings in order to break the harmony.
When art that I used to admire had insensibly exhausted itself, I found the ideal replacement in the form of ugliness. Indeed, art that was aesthetically ugly, disproportionate and wrong by all accounts served as the foundation to forming my painting style. It was significantly important to me, as this theme has been filled with the powerful idea of accepting coarse reality as it is. Art that evokes a feeling of trauma gave me an opportunity to feel life, to doubt, to live through the moment, to ask questions and to think. Ask and think. One of my paintings was made after looking at Edouard Manet’s shameless masterpiece ‘Olympia’ (1863) what gave me an opportunity to experiment with opposites, texts and signs. Each abstract painting contains a part of my inner revolution, where the conflict between beauty and ugliness is changing my self-perception.

Medium: Mixed Media

Size: 100 x 150 cm

Website: www.valeriesavchits.com

May ’58 by Anni Wilson

This is an image of my mother as a little girl, sitting with her mother at a New Jersey rest area on the way home from an amusement park.

Medium: Linocut

Size: 9″x9″

‘St. Christopher. Elephant & Castle’ by Danny Pockets

Part of a series of paintings called Congregation. These locations, often invisible to our scrutiny, yet part of our everyday and fast disappearing under a wave of glass and homogenisation. Culturally and historically our cities are are a palimpsest. Stories beneath stories. These works reference our rich art history of religious iconography to transport the everyday into something iconicand magical and help us re-evaluate our encounters with what we may otherwise consider humdrum. Here St Christopher (found between two bridges in South London) gives the traveller sustenance and a guiding light between two thoroughfares.

Medium: Oil, Acrylic, Aerosol, Shellac and Chinagraph Pencil on Unprimed Linen.

Size: 245cm x 180cm

Website: www.dannypockets.com

‘Kilve’ by Jackie Curtis

Limited edition woodblock cut from a large piece of fruit wood (I think it is pear). Most of the inspiration for the picture comes from a recent (Nov 2015) winter’s walk on Kilve beach: ammonites, rock pipit, gulls, wigeon, seaweed were all there in my walk that day only the cormorant was missing. The different rock formations: jagged pavements, sedimentary cliffs and sweeping curves in the shale were also all to be found on the beach as the tide went out. I made a design feature of the ammonites exaggerating their presence on the beach. So glad I chose Kilve for a walk that day!

Medium: Limited edition woodblock

Size: circa 90cm x 43.5cm

Website: www.jcurtisart.com

‘We Aint All Middle Class Bohemians’ by Laura Rosser

A woodcut based on a film still from Port Elliot Literature Festival in St.Germans in Cornwall. This is from a body of engaging work using typewriters.

On the river bank in the image are two people sitting at one of my typewriters and they are typing messages that went straight to a twitter feed. Merging the digital and traditional are key element of my practice.

The title is one of the messages typed on the typewriter during the festival.

Medium: woodcut

Size: 120h x 220 w cm

Website: http://laurarosser.com/

‘The Angel of History’ by Tinka Bechert

The distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.“
Albert Einstein

Tinka Bechert’s complex tracings bring historic and contemporary image together in a kind of visual time travel into the collective memory of imagery.
Her subversive appropriations cast an entirely new light on the historic sources, even daring them towards their own inversion, are also cunning commentaries about the mythical burden of originality and authenticity.
To dissolve the boundaries between painting and drawing she uses acrylic paint, markers, charcoal and ink to merge an array of materials, techniques and disciplines.The ongoing exploration of this balancing act between abstraction and figuration parallels the combination of intuitive, process-oriented painting with the ambiguous nature of concepts, meaning and narrative. As materials and genres mingle, aesthetics and concepts intertwine.

Short Bio:
Tinka Bechert currently lives in her native Berlin as well as Ireland, where she also studied (2003 BA in Fine Art, 2010 MA in Visual Arts Practice, IADT, Dublin). Her work has been exhibited in many countries, including Ireland, the UK, Germany, Austria, the US and Canada. Tinka Bechert’s work is held in many private and public collections including the Office of Public Works, Ireland, the Central Library/ Archives, Germany (Staatsbibliothek Berlin), the Victoria and Albert Museum London (National Art Archives) and Tate Britain, London.

Medium: Acrylic on Canvas

Size: 80 cm x 100 cm

Website: www.tinkabechert.com

‘Lucent’ by Rupert Burt

I make abstract works in a number of different ways that share an illusionistic quality that throw up many figurative references, especially within the realm of science. The various unique and unorthodox methods by which the paintings are made seek to explore the possibilities of paint. The Trace painting group of which Lucent is part of, came about out of a desire to make abstract paintings that have a sense of deep space and time.

Medium: Acrylic on canvas

Size: 164x144cm

Website: http://www.rupertburt.com/

‘Women in an Indian Market’ by Penelope Anstice

This painting is inspired by a recent trip to Rajasthan in India. I love the colour and vibrancy of the markets and the style in which the women often cover the heads with a gauzy veil in this part of the country. I wanted to convey the riot of colour and movement as these women go about their everyday business and yet, through their garments and the way they move, are exalted to something reminiscent of a biblical scene.

Medium: Oil on board

Size: 66cm x 82cm

Website: www.penelopeanstice.com

‘Mary Updates Her Status from “In a Relationship” to “It’s Complicated” by Ross Van Gogh

Mary Updates Her Status from “In a Relationship” to “It’s Complicated” is a piece about how modern human interactions and relationships are being altered and even augmented by technology. This is altering our relationships with each other and most importantly with ourselves.

Medium: Oil on board

Size: 24 x 36 inches

Website: http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/ross-van-gogh.html

‘Fragment XXI’ by Mark Youd

The Fragments series is experimental in both the use of materials and the abstraction of the portrait. Physical texture is achieved using a combination of heavy impasto techniques and vigorous destruction of the painted surface, stripped back with knives, wire brushes, sandpaper and solvent to reveal the finished painting. The portrait itself has been deconstructed, sometimes in an angular, geometric fashion, sometimes with a sense of fluidity. The face may not be immediately discernible, if at all, but searching for it should be visually exciting.

Medium: Oil on Board

Size: 40 x 30cm

Website: www.markyoud.co.uk

Untitled (A Green Jar and Leather) by Mimi Fairall

I created this mixed media drawing after researching the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat. I am particularly fascinated by the grungy and raw materiality of his mark-making and how honestly he represents himself through his work. At this stage in my career I am still exploring my own abstract visual language, and the vigour and confidence that is conveyed through Basquiat’s work is something I greatly aspire to.

Since experimenting and being dissatisfied with my use of lime green in previous smaller drawing studies, I decided to work on a larger scale in order to allow more physical freedom to create a broader scope of marks. The warm red, teal and white that I introduced to the lime green proved to be a challenge to work with as the colours were garish and not harmonious. As I continued to add more layers of material to the work, I began to appreciate the clashing pigments and felt it was an honest representation of my laborious drawing process.

The title of my drawing is a play on words and a reference to Basquiat’s work ‘Untitled (Yellow tar and Feathers)’ created in 1982.

Medium: Pastel, Acrylic, Oil Stick, Collage, Gesso, Gloss Gel and Oil Pastel on Fabriano paper

Size: 150cm x 220cm

‘Mohammad, Sudanese Poet in the Calais Jungle’ by Hannah Rose Thomas

Mohammad is a refugee from Darfur I met in the Calais Jungle. For his portrait he is standing outside his shelter and home for the last four months. In his hands is his most treasured possession; a colouring book containing his beautiful Arabic poetry. His poem describing fleeing the perils of war in Sudan moved me to tears and is included in Arabic in this painting. I hoped to capture something of his dignity and sensitive spirit even in the midst of such hardship.

Medium: Oil Paint on Wood

Size: 42cm x 30cm

Website: www.hannahrosethomas.com

‘Fallow Ground’ by Tom Down

Tom Down’s work riffs off of romanticized cliches sourced from such varied origins as paintings, film, television, illustration and advertising. Approached in a non-hierarchical fashion, these common motifs such as alpine vistas, desert valleys, snowbound landscapes and forest scenes are all re-trodden by the artist.

Whilst the work revels in the these nostalgic ideals, it does not seek to simply replicate specific places, instead familiar images are composed to create archetypal scenes, blurring the boundaries between the found and the created.

He utilizes this as a comment on our own unrealistic expectations of these landscapes and that of the artifice of painting itself.

Medium: Acrylic and Gesso on Board

Size: 50 x 40cm

Website: www.tomdown.co.uk

‘Rita’ by Amy J A Higgins

Rita is part of a series of 9 portraits which have been reworked and transformed from their original portrait to explore ideas if identity through various masks and metamorphosis. I am interested in the duality of materials and processes, and subject matter.In this series the eyes (the window to the soul) are always visible. Obscuring the rest creates a deeper meaning to the representation of the disguised person.

Medium: Mixed Media

Size: 35cm x 40cm

Website: www.facebook.com/ArtBoxHiggins

‘Anniversary Couple’ by Susannah Nathanson

This diecast pair of seated toy figures caught my imagination as a wonderful ode to love, age and companionship. I find these old toys, with their flecked and weathered paintwork and brilliantly observed modelling things of great beauty and narrative meaning, They are a joy to paint and are constantly triggering exciting points of reference and stories.

Medium: Oil on canvas board

Size: 30x30cm

Website: www.susannahnathanson.co.uk

‘Clamour’ by Sally Muir

An ink drawing of a clamour of Rooks, drawn with a feather

Medium: Feather and ink

Size: 58x54ins

Website: sallymuir.co.uk

‘Summer’ by Gianluca Pisano

Part of a 4 season series of paintings

Medium: oil on canvas

Size: 100x100cm

Website: http://www.gianluca-pisano.com/bodies.html

‘Caraili’ by Orlanda Broom

My paintings are lush and colourful landscapes that represent a fantastical, re-imagined place. The surface joyousness is tempered by an uneasy sense of abandonment generated through the succubus-like nature of plants and the highly saturated almost toxic colour.

Medium: Acrylic, resin and varnish on canvas

Size: 120cm diameter

Website: http://orlandabroomartist.com/

‘Yellow Caravan’ by Paul Crook

This painting explores the geometrical shapes and structures that can be found within the fragments of our shared environments. The ‘yellow caravan’ belongs to a series of paintings that explore the idea of ‘escape architecture’. These temporary places resonate with the layered personal narratives of families and communities that have inhabited these places during our more recent cultural and social histories. The use of saturated vivid colour is employed to elevate these normally bland, overlooked and unpopulated locations to something that is both seductive and celebrated. These places offered a promising, beautiful and perfect future; a place for shelter and happiness. My paintings attempt to explore what remains of this once youthful and optimistic new world.

Medium: Acrylic on Canvas

Size: 125x95cm

Website: http://www.paulcrook.kk5.org/

‘entilaro-02’ by Kuros Nekouian

One piece of a series of 18 paintings, which I did during my stay in London.
The titles derive from what you can read of the ‘Ventilator’ sign inside the tube trains… or the remains of it.
I call my work organic abstraction and it is about:
particles · random · swarm · rhythm · networks · evolution · communication · social · repel · accumulate · infection · group dynamics · foam · unite · trapped · repetition · movement · cells · coalition · border · clone · relation · pandemic · biodiversity · isolation · chaos · colonies · mould · encapsulate · contact · bastard · mycelium · individual · divide · structures · correlation · races · dependent · behavior · adaption · mutation · exchange · cycle · masses · antibodies · entangled · societies · entropy · decay · parasite · self-organizing · pods

Medium: Enamel paintmarker, silver paintmarker, alcohol based ink and tape on Polydraw drafting film

Size: 65,5 x 84,5cm

Website: www.kuros.de