THE
DISCERNER
Discerning The World of Arts
“Identity” by Alison Shanks
Abstract | Cubism | Expressionism | Figurative | Fine Art | Modern
June 2018
Editor’s Letter Dear Readers, I hope that you are all well. What I am about to tell you will certainly sound extremely cliché at first but it is actually quite extraordinary. I have always understood the privilege of owning original artworks but it struck me when I saw “Crucifixion” by Daniel Hooper. You will see this exceptional work if you read our June issue. I absolutely loved it! And I thought about the following: An original artwork is original. This means that there is no other anywhere and that there will never be any other ever. Is that not a wonderful concept? It means that you are owning something that is absolutely unique. And to make the idea even more interesting, you must keep in mind that the “unique” artwork that you would own has not been produced by a machine. It has been created by an extremely talented individual, who has become an extraordinary artist after spending hours and hours practising and experimenting before finally facing a blank canvas and transforming it into the magnificent artwork it became! Doesn’t it encourage you to acquire an original artwork? If you do not obtain it today, somebody else will get it, and you will never see it again…
Kindest regards Celine Gaurier-Joubert
Contact & advertising enquiries: E: celine@thediscerner.com W: www.thediscerner.com T: 0044 20 7491 9925
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Contents
Alison Shanks
Mary Pfaff
Daniel Hooper
Melanie Wright
Michelle Hold
Sue Malkin
Rita Zimmerman
Scott McLachlan
Lou Hamilton
Angela Saxon
Robert Noreika
Nicholas Coley
Louise Holgate
Emma Davis
Thomas Strumpel
Sarah Jane Brown
David Henty
Michael Boffey
Caia Matheson
Evi Antonio
Barbara Krupp
Tim Short
Alison Shanks Alison originally comes from London, UK but spent some of her youth growing up in Zambia, Africa. She has since lived in many other countries: France, Spain, Ireland, Wales, USA, Sardinia and is now currently living in Sicily, Italy. She completed her first Degree in Fine Art in London at Hornsey School of Art and followed that with a set design career in the Film and Television Industry. Amongst living in other countries she lived the longest in Colorado, USA where Alison built a house, married and had two children, returning to the UK when they were very young and working at first as a Greenwood furniture maker and then concentrating on her first love, sculpture.
Alison returned to full time education in 2007 to gain a degree in Ceramics at Bath Spa University, UK. and continued to gain a Master of Arts in Ceramics. She then moved to a studio in Shoreham, West Sussex to continue making sculptures and lived on an old sailing boat which led to deciding to sail around the world to undertake various artists’ residences. Initially intending to sail to Brazil where she had been offered a studio, an exhibition and some teaching at a University there, her very old dog found the journey difficult so she and her partner turned the boat into the Mediterranean, eventually arriving in Siracusa, Sicily where they bought an old semi-derelict farmhouse and built a studio from which Alison now works. Alison’s sculptures are in many private collections worldwide. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally. My sculptures are primarily heads made of Porcelain Clay which is then silkscreen printed with photographic mass media images. The images on the clay are then cut, stretched and manipulated into a collage. In my current series I am currently interested in incorporating Binary Codes and clouds in my work.. The photographic facial image is made to seem slightly lost in screen transmission and interference lines, white noise and Binary codes. The clouds are perhaps IClouds, or the idea of being lost in a cloud of confusion, or perhaps pollution. In 1936 Walter Benjamin wrote in his seminal essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” “The adjustment of reality to the masses and of the masses to reality is a process of unlimited scope, as much for thinking as perception.” There are various underlying themes in my work showing how we are controlled and manipulated by an oversaturation of - mass media, technology, social media, fake news, surveillance, religion and consumerism in all forms. There is a loss of self: we are confused, distorted, invaded and out of balance. I also hope that my heads have an ancient, God like, larger than life, uncanny quality. Sigmund Freud said that the uncanny is invoked in our perception when something that was familiar becomes unfamiliar following the slightest change.
www.alisonshanks.com
Front and back of “Identity� Porcelain and Steel stand H 75 cm W 30cm D 20cm
In this piece I am trying to highlight a loss of identity in our current times. Clouds of confusion and information distorted and amplified.
Daniel Hooper Self taught and Saatchi-featured artist Daniel Hooper is based near Winchester, Hampshire. A carpenter by trade, Daniel has many years’ experience in design and construction – little wonder his artistic career began using recycled OSB timber as his canvas. Describing his work as abstract-expressionism, Daniel paints without restriction or expectation – just the canvas, the brush and his undivided attention. Usually working in silence, but sometimes aided by music, he simply externalises whatever manifests in his mind. When questioned where his inspiration comes from, Daniel said: “everywhere and nowhere, I just paint, morning, noon or night, whenever it feels right, I paint”
“I had an art phase at school, but this never came to anything, so I left at 16 and went into construction. I was working on building sites around Europe, and in my spare time I used left over paint and remnants of the hoardings that shrouded the construction site as my canvas. I was playing with rubbish and painting on wood became my signature style. This got me noticed by The Discerner magazine, and then I became a featured Saatchi artist - which doesn’t normally happen that quickly.” Since being discovered, Daniel has begun painting on traditional canvas. He says the decision to move away from his signature style was challenging, but important for his career. “I started painting on canvas as some people were uncomfortable buying a painting on such an unorthodox material like wood. Being that I was self-taught, I had to teach myself again to use canvas.” His creative process is inspired by nature and today’s self-alienating culture. “I’m inspired by bird movements and wildlife and those quiet day-to-day observations of the world. No one has time any more. We come haring out the door to get in the car at 6:30 having shouted at the wife and kids and we don’t notice anything around us. We’re alienated by our phones and our busy lives, yet we sit and watch David Attenborough documentaries in awe. But we’re on planet earth and nature is all around us, we just don’t see it. If people stop for a minute or two to look at my painting, and maybe it makes them think about wildlife and what’s around them, I’ve done a good job”. To achieve the striking feel of movement in his paintings, Daniel relies on his background in construction. “I paint in blocks, and build the layers slowly to achieve the movement and feeling I was inspired by. Once I’ve finished with a colour, I have a break and step back. It’s so important in art to stand back, otherwise you can’t see the bigger picture.” The end result, however, is what drives his work. “When you get a reaction or sell a painting, it’s an incredible feeling. The work takes so much time, and the social media which spreads the word is also massively time consuming, but when someone parts with their hard earned cash to buy what you’ve created, it blows your mind. I’m addicted to that buzz.” Daniel dislikes many of the conventions of art. His distain for the elitist element of the business, plus his untrained background, makes him a divisive figure. “The fact that I have no training and started by painting on hoardings annoys the purists. I think it’s important to take the snobbery away from art to make it accessible to a broader audience.” His background means he gets messages from people from all walks of life. “I have school mates who contact me and say: ‘I fxxxxxg hate art, but you made me stop and think.’ I think if we all took 10 seconds now and again to stop and appreciate what’s around us, we’d all be nicer people.
www.danielhooperart.co.uk
IG danielhooperart
“Crucifixion� Mixed medium 150 cm x 120 cm
Capturing a vision at 4am in the morning .... An extremely epic and powerful piece which totally engulfed me for 21 hours straight! Every single bit of energy channelled from my body mind and soul into this one.....
Michelle Hold Michelle Hold is a German-born artist based in Italy who paints vibrant abstract works inspired by emotion and energy. Her canvases are loud and layered, enticing the viewer to look further and further into their depths. We just love the expressive force of Michelle’s canvases, and we’d recommend them for any interior in need of some punch. The artist, who grew up in Austria, had begun to study architecture when she fell into modelling. On her travels, she took various art and textile design classes. She then worked as a textile designer in Milan before later throwing herself full time into painting. Michelle has held solo exhibitions throughout Italy and in London, and she has participated in international art fairs in Miami, Athens, Milan and Berlin. Her works have featured in group exhibitions across the globe. She has been shortlisted for the RiseArt Prize in 2018.
Art is my life and passion. My work is based on capturing the essence of feelings, emotions and the invisible, eternal energy that pervades in the universe, focusing on beauty and it’s scarcity in current time. I am inspired by nature and new science that meets spirituality. Creating from a place of no time , no space no body in my studio in Italy. Like an architect I love to construct the images with multiple layering, but at the same time leaving space for surprise, for something unexpected to happen, where my dance like gestures encounter the vibrations of color. Color is vital to convey my message of harmony and wellbeing and I am interested in the perception of space and emotion through the equilibrated use of color, which I have trained while working in textile design. Currently I am working on paintings for my solo exhibition for 2018 ‘Color is calling’ where I will elaborate the deeper, silent message color brings and the healing influence it has on us. Color isn’t just color, specially in my paintings it shows a state of mind, feelings and emotions. I aim to offer the spectator a view into special moments of time where all is possible and like my creations to enchant, add to wellbeing and open the mind.
www.michellehold.com
www.twitter.com/holdm4
“Enjoy The Moment As It Is” Acrylics, pigments on canvas 60 cm x 60 cm
“Reemerge” Acrylics, pigments on canvas 120 cm x 200 cm
Rita Zimmerman I taught myself how to paint with oil paints when I was 14 and have never stopped. The love of the craft of painting with luscious paints and solvents have always been a part of my life and since a teenager I have had a constant dedicated studio wherever I have lived. I consider myself greatly blessed to be able to dedicate my life to my art. I have also been lucky to exhibit in museums and galleries in the U.S., Europe and Israel and have had my work collected by private collectors and museums for close to forty years. I was awarded a full scholarship and received my M.F.A. From the University of Cincinnati where I was born. A few highlights have been one person exhibitions in Paris, Vienna and Berlin. I lived in Colorado in the Rocky Mountains with my husband and two sons. In 2012 we moved to Israel so we could be part of the miracle of the modern state of Israel.
I first became acquainted with Rita Zimmerman’s work some two years ago at a local exhibition. I became enthralled almost immediately. Her artistic language is deeply private, although her artistic manner is suggestive of–and bears–an impressive material reality. Her palette is predominately dark, and although she is a master of tonal nuance, her painting is deceptively rich in color. Applied with brisk strokes of the brush, she eschews cheap visual effect, and models form with a touch that is sure and certain; a touch that is reminiscent of nineteenth-century Realist masters. Her favorite subjects–often the heads of animals or adolescent children–crowd the picture plane. Nothing extraneous invades the scene, indeed her subjects are often isolated and alone, leaving the viewer to explore every nuance of the sitter’s gaze. Zimmerman’s portraits of young children, are, I believe, masterpieces of contemporary painting. There is great simplicity of pose in these works. Their manner betrays an almost disconcerting aversion to the particularities of individualized appearance, making it difficult to identify these works as “portraits.” Instead, the sitter–often posed somberly and alone–is rendered with a spontaneous and fluid handling of the paint that obliterates detail and lends a veiled anonymity to the subject. Posed somberly and executed in dark tones, not a speck of sentimentality invades Zimmerman’s “portraits” of children. To discover meaning, we must explore areas lying well outside the artist’s simple dexterity at rendering visual reality. Instead, meaning is concentrated in fleeting, momentary expression. In the best of these paintings, such moments bear a haunting undercurrent of emotion. Their expressive power resides in the unveiling of indistinct, internal psychological states that are common in us all. Our own invisible lives are made visible by the artist as we see ourselves–perhaps our uncorrupted selves–in a child’s forlorn glance, angry stare or dreamy lassitude. Children, therefore, are a powerful metaphor, and, in Zimmerman’s hands, hint at how the innocence of youth–of the child within us all—can be corrupted by an often bitter, impersonal and unforgiving world. Michael De Marsche, PH.D. President and CEO Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center “From the first time I saw her paintings it was a jolt, very individual and the work of a master. Each individual brushstroke, color and composition are decisively hers and no one else’s. “ Roberto G. Agnolini, Director, Bryan and Scott Ltd. Art Gallery Colorado Springs, Colorado “Something essential like soul condenses onto Rita’s canvases. Their presences inhabit a compelling space.” Helen Eberhardie, M.A. RCA
www.ritazimmerman.com
IG ritazimmermanstudio
“Joseph” 2008 Oil on linen 61 cm x 71 cm This painting which is part of the Beauty series was inspired by the story of Joesph, beautiful in body, mind and spirit. It was written that he was irresistible.
“Soldier” 2006 Oil on linen 91 cm x 107 cm “Soldier”, a painting in the series of Beauty was inspired by a news story of a captured soldier and his courage and sacrifice. This painting premiered in an exhibition in 2007 at the FAC Modern, Spring Forward: Four Colorado Artists in Colorado Springs, Colorado
Lou Hamilton Lou sells to collectors worldwide privately & through the online gallery Saatchi art. Her work has been commissioned for site-specific projects, won prizes and exhibited in both group and one-woman shows. She studied at Byam Shaw School of Art and Chelsea College of Art, graduating from both with Distinction. Her conceptual work was followed by welding scrap steel and wielding an early video camera, and the TV/film industry seduced her while she raised her kids until she finally returned to painting and drawing. Her book of drawings “Brave New Girl” was published in 2016 and her new illustrated self-help book Fear Less is out in April 2018. Her painting, drawing & sculptural installation show “O” is to be exhibited from March 22nd -25th 2018 at The Other Art Fair London. She is a life Member of the Chelsea Arts Club.
Lou Hamilton’s work consists of abstract oil paintings and ink drawings on paper. Her focus has been on landscape but gradually her view turned from looking forwards to the horizon, to seeing the world from above. At first she painted the hotch potch rectangles she saw from a plane until her attention turned to the domestic, piles of crockery piled on top of each other like a target. The concentric circular patterns took over her paintings but then her drawings started to simplify the imagery still further. Each day she started to draw freeform circles with beautifully viscous inks using calligraphy brushes. They weren’t perfect and they were finished off with a wiggly line led away by her character Brave New Girl who steps off a red Chinese block mark, into the unknown. These repetitive drawings, one day after another became like a meditation; a circular trace of calm and order in the chaos of the day. Lou turned back to her paintings and simplified them too. Pale rings on dark backgrounds or dark circles against light. Yin and yang. Chaos and order. Suffering and the search for meaning. A balance of opposites. Life as eternal, infinite energy that never disappears but only changes form; the circular span of life. Carl Jung was compelled and comforted by drawing mandalas long before he discovered what they meant. “Formation. Transformation. Eternal Mind’s eternal recreation.”(Memories, Dreams, Reflections 195-196) He believed they represented the wholeness of the Self, the complete personality that is harmonious when everything is going well but will not tolerate self-deception. We cling to a round earth, are warmed by a round sun and our waters are guided by the pull of a round moon. At the beginning of humanity we sat round a camp-fire. We built stone circles like the British Stonehenge or the Polish Seven Sisters in answer to our spiritual call and gradually over time we came to construct grand cathedrals with ornate round rose windows that gave us the vision to something higher than ourselves. Yurts, igloos, geodesic domes, the roofs of temples and mosques envelop us in the three-dimensional semi-circle, with its footings forming a complete circle at its base. In hill forts and fortress towns the rings of walls, circle of ramparts and tower sitting on the plan of a circle offered protection, sanctuary and power. We were comforted by the secure enclosure that a circular boundary traced around us. Buddhists view the circle and their Mandala as a symbol of the sky, as transcendence; and the Universe is symbolized by The Wheel of Dharma, like the wheel of a cart that keeps moving, as in the teachings of Buddhism that continue to spread endlessly across geography and time. The eight spokes of the wheel symbolize the eightfold path of Buddha; guidelines to living well, with the right view, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, concentration and mindfulness. When you’ve got it ‘right’ in any of these areas you can feel it. When you work towards achieving ‘rightness’ in all of these then your whole life feels balanced. It makes for a life in progress. Every day is different and each challenge tests our ability to hold onto the right way. We are constantly slipping away from the guidelines, and so coming back to the circle is a constant reminder. We feel the substance of history, culture and time behind simple circular marks; behind the significance of the circle. The foundations of its symbolism run deep and its narrative has many layers. Because of all this Lou returns to it over and over and finds something new each time she puts ink to paper or paint to canvas. Creating a circle tunes her into the forces of nature, whilst her work is set in the square of the paper or canvas as geometric stillness and quiet in a busy and chaotic world. She aspires for the viewer to feel that same sense of completeness and comfort, a focus in which to rest our eyes and our minds, a place to re-energise our spirits; a cyclical continuum in which false starts, mistakes and challenges are all part of positive progression and learning.
“Focus” Oil and acrylic 91 cm x 91 cm Focus is the point where everything becomes clear. Signed off as always with Lou’s character Brave New Girl, she helps you focus your mind through the ripples of concentric circles, leading to the still water at the centre of the painting.
www.louhamiltonart.com
IG brave_newgirl
Robert Noreika Bob is a graduate of Paier School of Art and has been a professional artist for forty years. A prominent national award winning artist and illustrator, his paintings hang in both corporate and private collections throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan. In November 2009, the New Britain Museum of American Art acquired for their permanent collection a piece from his “Turtle-esque” series, “Catfish with Turtle”. Bob’s work is also featured in “100 Artists of New England” by Schiffer Publishing. He is represented in numerous galleries and teaches and lectures throughout New England. He has illustrated several children’s books and magazine editorials.
In 2015, Bob became a Signature Member at the American Watercolor Society. Bob is an elected member of the National Society of Painters in Casein and Acrylic, the Salmagundi Club, the Lyme Art Association, the Connecticut Watercolor Society, the Connecticut Plein Air Painters Society, the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts and he is a signature member of the New England Watercolor Society. Twice, Bob’s work has received awards and selected for the AWS traveling exhibition that toured the country in 2011 and 2013. Bob’s passion for art is matched by a natural talent to paint a wide variety of subjects, highlighted by expressive coastal scenes, intimate woodland pictorials and street scenes. Over the past decade, Bob works passionately on large formatted works on both canvas and paper. These studio pieces incorporate his years of observation, rendering and careful studies of aquatic life. This ongoing series is called “Turtle- esque” expressing gestural fluidity in a semi-abstract setting.
“Turtle-esque” A Series of Aquatic Expression Fluid Acrylics and Beyond “Endless curiosity is what drives Bob’s vision in this quest to capture the stillness above and the symphony below” The Back Story: what grew from a children’s book illustration project to a series that has captivated Bob’s passion for the past decade are his “Turtle-esque” works of art. Bob’s work encompasses the widest variety of technique and texture - pushing the limits to find one totally submersed in his latest works. Bob’s colleagues and collectors have been calling this body of work. “Brilliant! a catch worth pondering and gazing!:” “Marked by a thirst for exploration this series flows from a brush held in the hands of a modern day master” Fishing or canoeing Bob enjoys the opportunity to make micro observations below the water surface. There’s a total aquatic underworld to discover and explore. “Turtle-Esque” begins with this premise, at first in a very non-descript way and then the magic begins. Bob starts to articulate shapes, color, form and various textures which morph into aquatic plants, turtles fish, and frogs.. By suggestions of loose brushstroke Bob strives to emulate the energetic waters and undercurrent - with rhythm and gestural movement. In Bob’s words: “Blue Ascension” is a pinnacle piece in this series. Through a culmination of imagination and masterful techniques fostered over the past forty years Bob continues his artistic quest. As an outdoor enthusiast you ‘ll find Bob freshwater fishing from Maine to the Florida Coast. From the infamous west branch of the Farmington River where you’ll find trophy-sized trout in abundance, to salt water marshes to local ponds filled with turtles and frogs in their natural habitat. Bob’s intimate knowledge of these subjects plays a significant role in heightening awareness of our natural surroundings. One maybe captured first by the vivid display of color but it’s the subtle nuances of activity below that continuously searching for more.
“Pond Confetti” Acrylic 55 cm x 76 cm
www.robertnoreika.com
www.facebook.com/RobertNoreikaArt
Louise Holgate I studied Fashion and Textiles and then Environmental Design/Architecture at Chelsea School of Art and The Royal College of Art. I worked as an architect/ designer in London for many years. I always found time to paint and in 2008 moved to Bruton, Somerset to establish my painting studio. In 2015 Highgate Contemporary Art Gallery, London showed my work in a joint exhibition with Ruth Bunnewell. My paintings were also included in their Summer Exhibitions in 2015/2016. In 2016 I had my first solo exhibition at the restaurant Festa Sul Prato, in Deptford, London. My work was also included in the Bath Society of Artists 111th Annual Open Exhibition. In 2017 my work was included in NOA (National Open Art)/ARTROOMS exhibition in London. During this year I also showed my work with Rosvik Gallery at The Affordable Art Fair, Battersea, London and The Hope Charity Ball in Bath. My sketchbook was included in Rabley Drawing Centre’s SKETCH Open Exhibition. My paintings are regularly exhibited at the Chelsea Arts Club, London and are in a number of private collections in the UK and in Europe. My Paintings are: semi-abstract and I work with oil paint on board and on canvas. I work intuitively. The initial steps of a painting are without thought or premonition, like a dancer or an athlete. At some point during the painting process I arrive at a dialogue with the work. This is followed by much exploring and experimenting until a final conclusion is reached. Inspiration for my paintings comes initially from events and experiences and from my subconscious where a storehouse of material is found. I also like to give myself limitations – for instance use no more than 2 colours. Colour and its many aspects are important in my work. This includes the mixing, blending and layering of colours to produce a sense of light and of space. I also like to use colour symbolically to communicate messages. For instance, my palette changes with the place or season - be it earth colours of the winter, acid colours of fields of rape in flower or the blue of tropical waters. I am drawn to the contours of ancient landscapes and the patina and shape of objects and buildings worn by time. An acknowledgement of the resulting beauty can be found in many of my paintings – often through the use of texture. Amongst the many artists whose work I admire and feel a great affinity with are the post-war British artists. Their fascination with the archaeology and the sculptural monuments of our ancestors are a particular inspiration. I see my work as contemplative and intimate in scale. I invite the viewer to develop a visual relationship with my paintings that is uplifting and whose visual meaning can change to reflect the fluctuations of their state of mind.
www.louise-holgate.co.uk
IG louise.holgate
“Blues� Oil on board 61 cm x 76 cm In this painting I celebrate the colour blue. Working with areas of pure blue and and areas of mixed blues to form a cohesive whole.
Thomas Strumpel I was born in a place along the Rhine River and then some 20 years later, I studied art in Cologne, a hub for art and artists in Germany at that time. I began with drawings but now my focus is on painting. I work with very diluted watercolours, which I apply multiple layers, until depth is reached in the picture. It creates a subtle colour play. The texture of the canvas is evident and becomes part of the painting. I now live in Zurich, Switzerland. In 2015, Elten & Elten Gallery presented my work for which I enjoyed the exposure.
What can a painter say about his own work? That he lives for it? No! He is painting! He does not have any occupation, his life is his art. He insists on seeing the world as he sees the world. However, the exercise of this right is associated with great effort and struggle. Until you get to the point where you have overcome thinking in the sense that you no longer have to think while painting, but leave it to the painting, which is generally described as intuition. The difficulty lies in standing behind his painting and solving his ego. I can not really substantiate my choice of subject. Pictures and motifs appear and some remain so persistent that they have to become pictures. The colors are laid incessantly over each other and interwoven with each other until the picture has created its own existence. At some point, the picture wants to be left alone. It is finished. Now it can be viewed. Now it can open and connect with the viewer, as long as the image and the viewer are on the same wavelength. Often these viewers see something different in the picture than the artist. This shows that the picture is not only created by the artist himself, but in a space that is bigger than the artist himself. Many of my pictures have been painted from photos from my family album. The question of identity and self-understanding which is the question of the meaning of memory in a person’s life, has been asked here. Does every moment become a memory? What is the past? If anyone reads these lines, likes my work and has a photo that he or she would like me to transform into a painting, then this person should contact me. Right now I am starting a new series of works which I have titled: “The life of others”. For some time now I have started to embed some of my “family photos” in other fields of motifs, and to combine them with mushrooms, plants, stars and other. The work entitled “Piggybacking with mushrooms” is a good example of this.
“Emile gaugin is waiting ….” 2018 Mixed media on canvas 30 cm x 40 cm
“Emile Gauguin, son of the worldwide known painter, is waiting for tourists to sell them self-made souvenirs”. His father Paul Gaugin left Europe to find his paradise and his son. What does he think about that island and the visitors ? I combined this old newspaper cutting with an office furniture advertisement , a symbol for our structured every day life in a modern world. Its about how different dreams of paradise or utopia can be.
www.thomas-struempel.net
David Henty David Henty is now recognised as the number one copyist artist in the world today. His work is meticulously and lovingly recreated to the finest detail, having honed his craft over 25 years to now master the techniques and nuances of some of history’s most iconic artists. Each piece involves rigorous preparation through an immersive research process: studying the original painting where possible, developing an understanding of how the artist worked, and sourcing the correct materials and pallet true to the period. David’s work, and art copying, has become it’s own genre, and its own legitimate art form, much sought after and collected by art lovers and galleries alike.
With more than twenty-five years experience replicating great works of art, David Henty is now considered the world’s best art forger/ copyist. He has considerable expertise in convincing the viewer and art experts, having mastered the techniques and idiosyncrasies of some of the most iconic artists, from Michelangelo and Caravaggio through to Pablo Picasso. Each piece involves rigorous preparation through David’s immersive research process, studying the original painting, developing an understanding of how the artist worked, and sourcing materials true to the period. David Henty’s history as a copyist/art forger starts, appropriately enough, with a conviction for forgery, more than twenty-five years ago. It was while serving the resulting prison sentence that David’s passion for art was rekindled. Quickly seduced by the technicality of copying, he has honed his craft to perfection, establishing a thriving legitimate business. David explains that his is a very different discipline to producing the original artwork, and that copying is notoriously difficult. Mastering an artist’s unique style, however, is a challenge he embraces. It is only once he’s developed an affinity with the artist, that he’s connected with him or her that he will attempt to emulate their style. This means that David’s preparation for a painting begins even before his brush touches the canvas! Prior to starting work on a piece, David will delve into the artist’s life and thoughts in order to get beneath the skin of that person. He derives huge satisfaction from deconstructing a work and analysing how to lay down each stroke, as well as mixing the perfect palette. There is the upmost importance of copy artists in the art world, to produce works of the greatest artists that have every lived. Once this art form has gone it will be lost forever. David Henty produces his highly collectible paintings for enthusiasts and private collections around the globe. Each original piece is presented in its own bespoke, handmade frame and signed on the reverse by David to certify authenticity. A star in his own right, David’s copies have come to the attention of high profile media channels such as The Sunday Telegraph, the BBC, and Radio 4, who’ve all run articles on him, as well as an appearance on the Sky Art channel, Sky News and many more. This month David will be appearing on the BBC programme Click, discussing the latest technology in finding fakes and demonstrating how he recreates the masters.
“I like to be creative with other peoples ideas” David Henty Artist and Forger
www.davidhentyart.co.uk
IG davidhentyartforger
“DH Spin off � 5 foot, gloss on a round canvas Each piece can be bespoke to individual interiors, size and colour.
Caia Matheson Caia Matheson is an award-winning contemporary oil painter based in Brighton, UK. She was born in Johannesburg and educated in Tokyo and London. Matheson has exhibited widely in the UK, and has been shortlisted for numerous awards, including winning Brighton Artist of the Year in 2004. Matheson painted Europe’s first Rainbow Pedestrian Crossing Brighton in 2014, and in 2013 her work was selected by author Neil Gaiman for the book A Calendar of Tales. Matheson is inspired by wabi sabi, or the beauty of imperfection.
For Matheson, painting is a very physical process. She loves to mix paint mediums and experiment with the effects. This, for her, can be the most exciting part of the creative process. Her mediums are oils – tubes of oil paint, oil bars, oil pastels and mixtures of oil paints and dyes. She enjoys the texture consistency and smell of them. Matheson paints with her hands and washing-up sponges onto canvases laid flat on the floor, building and scratching off layers of oil paint to create a world within worlds. The layers are designed in a way to expose different subjects of the composition. These subjects are buried in the dark and light spaces and come out and disappear as the light changes presenting different aspects depending on shifting light conditions and mood. My work is about words and verse from all sources such as radio plays audio books stories song lyrics and poetry. I get such great pictures from words and translate them into my work as a visual narrative. I begin painting with a specific colour that I have in my mind’s eye. I then introduce other colours and begin to build layers on the canvas. These layers are then scratched off and layered over again like a palimpsest literally meaning ‘scraped clean and used again’. I love the idea of previous markings that are not visible but are still an inherent part of the composition. I consider each successive layer a generation to populate or depopulate the canvas as needed and create my own world as I go. I like to create a world within worlds. As a kid I used to be fascinated by the Lowly worm in the Richard Scarry books. I loved scouring each page to seek out that worm and when I found it I would feel most content like I had discovered a piece of secret truth that would uncover all the answers to my questions about the universe. There are some Lowly worms in my abstracts albeit in symbolic form.
www.caiamatheson.com
IG caiamathesonart
“Samsara” Oil and dyes on hand stretched canvas H 80 cm x W 80 cm x D 3 cm
“Angels and Demons” Oil and dyes on hand stretched canvas H 100 cm x W 100 cm x D 3 cm
Barbara Krupp I was born in Elyria, Ohio, a small town in northeast Ohio. After graduating from high school I trained as an x-ray technician. As a self-taught artist, I place the beginning of my profession career in 1976, when I both gained my first gallery representation in Rockport, MA. and had a painting accepted into the permanent collection of the Massilion (Ohio) Art Museum. Through the venues in which I chose to exhibit, my paintings to date found their way into dozens of private and public collections throughout the world. As I eventually broadened my personal outlook through travel, my artistic horizon widened, as well. I have studied with many well known artists including Graham Nickson, a painter educated at the Royal College of Art in London.
A recipient of the Prix de Rome and Harkness Fellowship at Yale University, Nickson is celebrated for his monumental canvases with figural abstractions. Since then my large paintings in acrylic on canvas have has become more minimal and my color more sensuous. My current work is a culmination of all I have learned to date, after decades of commitment to the practice of my art. For me they are also an exciting new beginning in my search for a totally abstract form of expression.
I just start working with colors because I’m really a colorist. I know what goes with what, I have my feelings and I just want to get everything flowing, and the color working great. I trained to be an x-ray technician. From that time on, as T.S. Eliot wrote in his “Whispers of Immortality,” I have seen “the skull beneath the skin.” The structure of the painting is very important to me, and in my most recent series I have, in a manner of speaking, allowed the bones of the painting—both compositionally and metaphorically, become the painting’s’ subject matter. Georgia O’Keeffe, whose early 1940s series of pelvic bones enclosed spaces that later in the decade became forms themselves, I found the areas of interest in my own landscape and floral abstractions to be the atmospheric spaces between forms. I came to realize that the significance in my paintings was not in the forms, but in the spaces in between them. In my “Abstract Stories” series, those atmospheric spaces became increasing bounded by spontaneously drawn shapes. Painted in shades of ochre-tinted white –the color of bone-- the enclosed spaces began to take on shapes that suggested something as intimate and normally hidden as bone; organic shapes that suggest body parts unveiled here and there as though to tease a lover. T.S. Eliot ends his poem with, ”Our lot crawls between dry bones to keep our metaphysics warm.” I explore the interface between passion and the intellect, pulsing tissue and desiccated bone. Our lot may be to crawl through our mortal span but, like the poet, we also sing.
www.barbarakrupp.com
IG barbarakrupp
“Apples and Blue Stones” Acrylic 117 cm x 152 cm This painting was painted with pure joy. Happiness should come your way when viewing
“Flying With Hemingway” Acrylic Painting on gallery wrapped stretched canvas 91 cm x 122 cm This is in a series titled, “Last Night I Went to Pandora”, magic land
Mary Pfaff Mary Pfaff is a contemporary Canadian abstract painter. Her passion for painting spans over 4 decades. Pfaff is a fine arts honour graduate from the University of Ottawa and shows her work in solo and group exhibitions. Mary’s work can be found in public and private art collections in Canada and internationally in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. Mary is a respected visual arts teacher and creativity coach, an avid art and health advocate, founder of Artswell an Arts and Health charity in Canada and a recognized community art collaborator.
To paint is my lifelong aspiration and favourite verb. My abstract paintings and drawings are inspired by the mystery of nature and by life’s experiences and emotions. Texture, colours and patterns in nature are ever present and always in a state of flux. From the patina and erosion of crumbling architecture, the amazing patterns of the earth from above, clouds formations to the intricate variety of tree bark. Beauty exists in the most unexpected places. One of my favourite things to extend my abstract vocabulary is to photograph, record, collect close ups textural studies that inform my painting. As long as I can remember I have been captivated with the sensuality and physicality of paint and drawing materials. Enriching the painted surface has held my interest for over 35 years. Exploring lush texture, intricate layers of colour and discovering new ways to mark the surface has kept my interest and fuelled my passion. I work with a balance of spontaneity and attentiveness. Both additive and subtractive approaches are in play as I build up multiple layers of paint and mediums using various tools and applications. My art is simultaneously energetic and contemplative and reflective. Texture positively contributes to the light and restorative feel. Small or large scale, my work is always part of a series or a continuum of chapters. My recent exhibition the Light Within was stirred by Canadian songwriter Leonard Cohen’s lyrics there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light get in. This collection is full of wild contrasts in temperature, swaying gestures and delicate nuances with thin shifting hues and veiled overlays. I’m drawn to the spiritual in art and fascinated by the profound capability of art to empower and transform individuals and communities. As an enthusiastic participant within the health and wellness movement for the last 20 years I have had the privilege of providing opportunities for others to engage in the creative process in times of transition, illness and uncertainty. At the intersection of art and wellness is care. It is important to me as an artist and a teacher to foster a nurturing, inclusive environment where imagination is the key modality towards self-awareness and choice. My experiences in extending my work into the community through art projects and partnerships have proved to be both enlightening and life affirming. My art offers viewers an opportunity to pause and react. Perhaps they may become absorbed in what they see and find a kind of beauty that activates their imaginations and invites fresh possibilities. Spirit of place has always been a resonating theme for me. I’ve spent time in the landscapes of New Zealand, Australia and Ireland and touring the gardens in Cornwall England. Each place has a certain quality of atmosphere and particular moments hold powerful sensory memories. I like to take the viewer to a place they will want to return to over and over.
www.marypfaff.ca
“The Gift” Acrylic on canvas 76 cm x 101 cm From the Light Within exhibition at Santini Gallery in Ottawa Canada
Melanie Wright Melanie lives in the Cotswolds, where her deep affinity with horses and the landscape inform and inspire her paintings. She is well known for her equestrian sporting images in the fields of Racing, Dressage and Polo. Melanie trained as a portrait painter at Heatherleys School of Fine Art in London and carries both her formal portrait painting skills and her endless fascination with depicting movement, spirit and the atmosphere of place, into her artwork. Working in oils, watercolour and drawn media, Melanie’s paintings have been exhibited in London and Oxfordshire and feature in private collections in the USA, Europe and Scandinavia.
For as long as I can remember I have been making art, in the form of drawing and painting. I was born into a family in North Yorkshire, that shared a passion for the countryside, horses and art. Both my grandmothers were art school trained practicing artists. My paternal Grandmother was a gifted watercolour painter, notably of winter landscapes, and my maternal Grandmother was for a time, an illustrator, in London. My Grandfathers were keen riders, and racing enthusiasts, with hunting and polo (in Burma and India) playing a key part in their lives. This background has been an influence on my own creative path, as has the dynamic of enjoying life outdoors, equestrian pursuits and handling horses, balanced with reflective, concentrated periods of study and painting from nature, learning to look and to explore the beauty of the landscape. Following those formative early years, I went to Art School in London. Training firstly as a textile designer and then later as a Fine Art portrait and life painter at Heatherleys School of Art, followed by a History of Art Course at Christies Education. I was particularly drawn to and inspired by artists from the Modern British Period, such as Ivon Hitchens, Paul Nash, John Skeaping and Alfred Munnings. For a number of years I ran a portrait studio and teaching practice in London. After moving away from the city, to North Oxfordshire, in 2008, I reconnected in some ways, through my painting to those early influences and have focused on equestrian painting and landscape subjects ever since. The Cotswolds provide an endlessly rich source of inspiration, offering such a fantastic variety of equestrian sports, and of course the stunning landscapes. Working in oils, watercolour and drawn media (occasionally mixed media), my approach is unashamedly old school. I like to work directly from the subject, wherever and whenever possible, filling sketchbooks with observations, studies and ideas. This approach proved particularly rewarding when ‘Artist in Residence’ at specific locations, such as a racing stables, racetrack, or national park. I relish the opportunity to build a connection over a period of time with both ‘place’ and ‘people’, observing the day to day activities and variety of subject matter, that residencies present. Occasionally, alongside painting for exhibitions, I work to private commission, notably for equine portraiture. My two main category subjects, while being on the face of it, rather different, work both independently and combined in a painting. Much of my landscape painting is carried out spontaneously, on the spot, on a small and intimate scale, through multiple studies. Larger landscape pieces are developed further later on in the studio, away from the subject, with a focus on memory and surface interest. Both ‘equestrian’ and ‘landscape’ provide me with the inner connection and outer movement I am searching for. My aim is to capture the fleeting moment, be it dramatic or meditative in nature. This could be the charge of horses across a polo ground, or around a racetrack, or the shadows of overhead clouds scudding across a valley bringing a rapid change of light and atmosphere. I look for the palpable energy and my own emotional response. And ultimately, this is what I feel compelled to engage with, to continually explore and to create through my art.
www.melaniewrightartist.co.uk
“Reaching for the Ball” Charcoal on paper 40 cm x 52 cm image size Framed in a wide matt black painted frame with an antique gold outer edge detail
“Full Charge Ahead” Mixed media, watercolour, pastel and charcoal on board 57 cm x 81 cm image size Framed in a wide hand finished taupe grey frame with an antique gilt edge detail
‘This polo image is inspired by watching play at Cirencester Polo Club in Gloucestershire. One of my favourite local painting venues. I love to sketch there, where the drama of sport and spectacle contained within the polo ground arena, provides a high key and fast moving dynamic for drawing, as the teams charge, turn and shadow play back and forth across the field.’
Sue Malkin Sue Malkin studied at Leeds University ( BA Hons Fine Art), developing a strong interest in figurative art. Following a career in art education in the UK, a move to Grenoble, in the spectacular landscape of the Rhone-Alpes region of France, gave her exhibiting opportunities, for which she gained many awards, including Grand Prix, and Medailles d’Or. After nine years spent in France, she returned to the UK to live in the equally stunning countryside of Northumberland, and has exhibited almost continuously in solo, shared and group shows in public and private galleries. Her work in the studio and on location has also been featured on regional and national TV, and is collected widely.
A long-standing interest in the figure and life-drawing underpins my approach. Observation drawing of the figure is a demanding and rigorous discipline for an artist, and this eye-training is very valuable whether I am painting a large canvas or a swiftly executed sketch with a few lines. This emphasis on direct observation has permeated all of my work, in every direction it has taken, and it explains the fundamental importance of sketch-book work for me. Sketchbooks are essential for my knowledge of my subject-matter, and for giving me a reference library of starting points for developing ideas. I use various drawing media, - pencils, pens, marker pens, graphite, all easily portable, whether I am on a beach, looking at waves rolling in, or at a polo match, or a racecourse. My camera goes with me as well, but the quality of looking required for a drawing, however rapid, is very different from looking through a viewfinder. These initial sketches sometimes develop into larger works on paper, with mixed drawing media. Others evolve into paintings. The sea and wave movements featuring in some of my recent work, are developed from sketches around the UK coastline. Some are based on very high tides, with dramatic wave forms, and others are more contemplative in nature. I have three large studio easels, and usually all three are occupied by canvases in various stages of progress. I use oil paints on canvas, with quite a loose painting technique normally, and with vibrant colour. The scope of my subject-matter includes figures in movement, based on studies of dancers in rehearsal; These trace a sequence of movements, with an interplay of solid forms and spaces, with the introduction of metallic pigments which give an illusory appearance. I have taken a very similar approach with my equestrian work. As well-proportioned and athletic animals, they have been subjects for artists since Paleolithic times. As with the human figure, the bone and muscle structure dictate very clearly what we see on the surface, and adding a rider gives another dynamic to the composition. The combination of speed, power, elegance and control, and the psychology of the relationship between horse and rider have been an extremely rich source of developmental possibilities for me, enjoying their full dramatic potential. My latest paintings are the result of visiting 18th Century stables in an historic house, - beautifully designed spaces, with architectural elements such as arches, post divisions, hay racks, all testament to the value in which the horse was held. I felt that these spaces should be occupied by horses again, but perhaps the ghosts of horses. They are solid, but semi-transparent in places. Light falls on them, but through them at the same time. Some of this series have a strong colour component, but others, unusually for me, are almost monochrome, picking up the colour of the stonework, almost implying that the horses are also made of stone. I have also imagined how the time of day could influence the colours and tones, - some with diagonal streaks of sunlight , others, as illustrated by these images, the more subtle effects of moonlight or flickering shadows. Equestrian statues have always fascinated me, and I think these paintings show some influence of this - an image of an arrested movement, capturing a moment where we can understand what happened just before, and visualise what is about to happen next.
www.suemalkin.co.uk
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“Archway” Oil on canvas 46 cm x 60 cm The arch of the horse’s neck echoes the architectural shapes. Grey-green float frame
“Duet” Oil on canvas 46 cm x 61 cm These two racehorses competing, but in concert with each other. Unframed box canvas
Scott McLachlan Born in Scotland, Scott has lived and worked in The Netherlands for over 25 years. Having worked in many disciplines in art and design, he has found oil painting to be one of the most challenging and yet rewarding, since there is always the lure of mastering this powerful medium. As a freelance Product Designer, painting has become a means of leaving the constraints of the job behind, in order to be free to create and experiment with visual story telling of a different kind. Inspiration for his work comes from an early interest in the ‘fantasy’ artworks from the likes of Frank Frazetta and Boris Vallejo and an inquisitive desire to create visual images which can generate an emotional dialogue in the mind of the viewer.
After many years creating ‘fantasy’ artwork inspired by his fantasy art heroes, Scott has turned to more ‘earthly’ subjects and developed his painting style to suit. Living and working in The Netherlands, one cannot help be affected by the great Dutch fine art tradition, but specifically for him, by the visual ‘storytelling’ of the old Dutch masters with their twists and hidden meanings. “ I’m continually trying to capture an evocative or poignant moment in order to stir the emotions of the viewer (and myself), whether it be laughter, curiosity or a tear. I love discussing the paintings since what others perceive in them is often an education in itself!”. His atmospheric paintings offer the viewer a chance to expand on the perceived story within their own mind’s eye, perhaps completing a journey started for them. Scott uses very limited colour palettes to create moody and thought provoking images, which some have commented on as having an almost ‘haunting’ nature. “ I don’t use too realistic or complex colour pallets since, like a black & white photo, I feel there is more drama without”. “ Each work can take weeks to complete, the struggle to create what i’m trying to portray can force me out the studio for days at a time. The sheer joy of creating interest, a discussion or even selling a work get’s me back to the studio again and again, it’s a drug.” Interestingly, one of the most challenging parts of the painting process for Scott is deciding on the composition, to capture the chosen moment in time. “ I sketch up the basis of the concept and develop the painting as I go along, often changing the figures and setting, this makes for an exciting painting trip!”. Scott believes the title of a work is almost as important as the painting itself since it can turn the meaning behind the work on its head. His work can be seen on occasion at small art venues in The Netherlands and he is always open to discuss his work with those interested. (One of the works shown here is dedicated to the Battle of Britain Memorial Trust, and 10% of the sale will go to the trust).
www.scottmclachlan.com
“The Waverley” Oil on canvas 120 cm x 60 cm
“Against All Odds” Oil on canvas 120 cm x 60 cm
Angela Saxon Angela Saxon lives and works in beautiful northern Michigan near Traverse City — surrounded by the spectacular Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. She received a BFA in painting from Indiana University. Recent painting residencies have included Rome and the Sabina region, Italy; Tuscany and Chianti regions, Italy; Umbria, Italy; Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico; Palm Springs, California; Glen Arbor, Michigan. Her paintings are shown in galleries throughout the US and her work is held in both private and public collections; she also undertakes commissions.
The visual language of landscape is one that we most fundamentally share. Sky, trees, water: these are some of the most basic visual concepts that structure our perception of reality. But for all the commonality in these concrete objects, for each of us the experience of seeing is slightly different, being inevitably inflected by the perception of the observer. As a perceptual painter, Angela translates her observations of nature into a personal dialect of color, shape, line and light, expressive marks that both describe and negate their subject matter. Using this unique language, she is able to evoke more than the landscape in her atmospheric work, imbuing it with added purpose and clarity of vision. Beginning on location, Angela’s process moves from the generation of small plein air paintings or drawings to larger studio work. e multiple steps of interpretation allow her to both capture the immediacy of her ever- shi ing nature settings, and to meditate deeply and constructively on her pieces in the more formal and removed space of the studio. Her work typically moves from a depiction of concrete details into an intensi ed geometry, pushing toward abstracted shapes that are reminiscent of known forms but that have a purpose in the painting other than merely describing that known form. Her visual exploration of the natural world also regularly includes painting from the gure, as well as mixed media collages combining fragments of her drawings and paintings with work from her early childhood to the present. Angela typically works in series, painting through an idea resolution and then making further way forward to a new piece as the outcome of this process. While her painting is direct and confident, she also takes risks regularly and remains open to happy accident and creative chance: the way that a brush full of paint feels its way around the arc of a shoreline, inadvertently dragging bright green through pale blue. Contained in the open space between communication and doubt, Angela’s work is in a constant state of evolution.
www.angelasaxon.com
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“Play in the Shadows” Acrylic 23 cm x 43 cm Painted on location, moving from the edge of the forest to the beach
“Creek Light Dance” Acrylic 23 cm x 43 cm Painted late in the day, on location, at a beautiful little flowing creek
Nicholas Coley Nicholas Coley was born in Connecticut in 1971 and raised in Muir Beach, California. He hitch hiked &round the states for a couple years after high school trying to find Don Juan and Carlos Castenada. He was sure he had a destiny to become a medicine man or a brujo, but after getting hepatitis in a hostel in Santa Fe, he moved to Europe and studied art at the Beaux-Arts plus another small school for painting in the south of France. He lived, studied, and meditated daily for a year in a Buddhist Monastery outside of Bordeaux. After reading ‘The tropic of Capricorn’ by Henry Miller, he decided he was not meant for the disciplined, monastic life and went off in search for a more creative and spontaneous world, taking him to Prague for a year and selling paintings to tourists on the Charles Bridge. From there he took the transiberian railroad through Russia and deep into China before having a complete spiritual collapse in the summer of ‘94. The good news is it’s been a slow climb back up the mountain toward the benificenece and belonging of a higher power.
Anchored by the love of a good woman he’s actually been able to support his family, three extraordinary little kids, even putting a downpayment on a house...all exclusively with the proceeds from painting sales, which he’s damn proud of and still sort of in dumb happy shock. For almost 20 years now he has been painting full time, almost everyday. Turns out, he was something of a medicine man after all. My painting has its roots in the fanatical ethos of a small school in the South of France which made Cezanne its figurehead and had a very black and white view of art history. L’ecole Marchutz was a great place to get rooted in a concrete perspective of the fundamentals and a format of painting from real life. Twenty years later, I still paint on location, finding myself in relation to a place and seeking unity with my surroundings. Only now I’ve exchanged the south of France for the open-air nut house that is San Francisco. Coming home to the states and studying art was an ambiguous affair, where pluralism and general creativity replaced the achievements of a rooted tradition. Influences such as Wolf Kahn and other Bay Area figures allowed color theory to take a back seat to a generally looser love of all color and made more of a proclamation with bold brushwork and gestural lines. I looked for compositions with energy and tried to impress the immediacy and rush of painting beside major thoroughfares and in parking lots. More recently the matter of composition has played a prevalent role in my work, as I experiment with less conventional dynamics to arrange the urban and natural environments. For example, in my Market & Pearl Street series, I use the empty asphalt of the street to create a sparse and uncluttered majority of the canvas and forcing detail and subject matter to the periphery. Along the edge I use the darkened, unresolved negative space of a row of cars as its own color field, creating reductive and raw elements of form and a chance to interpret color as broad fields which unifies for a spontaneous, perceptual painting as one might see if blinded by sun. I see no end to the possibilities of painting out in the world. Just stand there long enough until the light shimmers off the pavement, or until you see the comforting pattern of parking meters, the side view mirrors, the shadows under cars. If you love nature enough, you will see it even here, in our urban world.
www.nicholascoley.com
“Water Moves Beneath Us #19” Oil on canvas 91.44 cm x 91.44 cm
“Freeway On Ramp #2” Oil on canvas 91.44 cm x 91.44 cm
This painting is in San Francisco’s Presidio, a place I have painted over 1,000 times in the last 12 years and never seem to tire of it. I love the pattern of this dense forest that lends itself to vertical lines and stripes, but also can create play between foreground and background, and light coming through.
I see no end to the possibilities of painting in the world. Just stand there long enough until the light shimmers off the pavement, or until you are moved by the perfect color of the freeway sign. If you love nature enough, you will see it even in our urban world
“Rock Springs #24” Oil on canvas 91.44 cm x 182.88 cm Painted at the summit of my favorite mountain, I grew up at sea level at the base of this sacred place and first hiked it with my best friend Tony at the age of 13. Still, it’s a place deep in my bones.
Emma Davis Emma Davis lives and works in London. She holds an MA degree in Literature and in Fine Art from studies at the Slade School of Fine Art, Chelsea College of Art and the University of York. This year, she returned to India and Antibes as Artist in Residence. She was recently selected for the London Creative Network, the London Intensive (run by the Slade School of Fine Art and Camden Arts Centre), and was shortlisted the ArtSlant International Prize, National Art Prize and the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.
Emma Davis is a writer and a visual artist. Led into abstraction, she is greatly influenced by Howard Hodgkin, as well as by Japanese block prints and Chinese pottery. She works across a variety of media, including oils, watercolour, etchings, monoprints and pencil on paper, but all of her work really relates to drawing, an activity she finds somehow intimate. An avid traveller herself, she draws a lot on public transport, or at galleries and concerts, where people are lost in their own thoughts, their private worlds on public display, absorbed and unselfconscious. Etching makes the drawings easier to read, more permanent, more finished. Davis often adds text to her works, making reference to what is in her head, what an image suggests to her, or what sensation is conjured. The act of drawing slows her down, allowing her to access her thoughts more directly. Similarly, her watercolours are mainly about the effect and meaning of line – an abstract quality but one that refers back to pictographic languages and calligraphy. Her palettes are intense, reflecting heat, a jangle of colours reacting to one another. – Anna McNay.
www.emmadavisartist.com
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“Orange Cyan Pink” Oil on paper 22 cm x 24 cm x 5 cm
This painting was shortlisted to the final round of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. Inspired by artists such as Ivon Hitchins, Hodgkin, and the bold simplicity and hieroglyphic language of Matisse, my paintings are concerned with colour relationships and the emotive response which colour can provoke - either individually or in combination.
Emma’s Indian watercolour paintings will be featured in the Riverside Artist’s Group show from Wednesday 6th to Saturday 16th June, Central Space Gallery, 23-29 Faroe Road, London W14 0EL, 12 noon to 6pm daily, Sunday 10th lunchtime talk 12-2pm. Private View Tuesday 5th June 6-8pm.
Sarah Jane Brown Sarah Jane Brown lives on the rugged Welsh coast, where her environment, and previous maritime career, have instilled a deep affinity with the sea. She studied ‘Fine Art - Painting’ at the West Wales School of the Arts, graduating with a first class honours degree. Brown’s career as a full time professional artist has steadily gained momentum and recognition and her work now attracts international collectors. She has exhibited widely in the UK, has had many successful solo shows. The artist also recently exhibited with the Royal Society of Marine Artists at the Mall Galleries in London and The Royal Cambrian Academy in North Wales. Sarah combines her knowledge of ‘old master’ techniques with contemporary working practice. Conceptually her paintings are an outpouring of personal feeling and a strong sense of place; using the landscape metaphorically to describe thoughts and emotions.
“Our surroundings form a part of us, they shape our perception and colour our thoughts and ideals. For me they are a vehicle to describe more internal aspects of our physical, emotional and spiritual selves. There is something about being immersed in the vastness of the landscape that gives clarity and focus to the space within. My approach to landscape is therefore introspective and intimate. I enjoy the versatility of oil paint, and find it the best medium to convey the varied sensations of being in the landscape; sometimes calm, restorative, or spiritually uplifting and at other times wild, dynamic, rejuvenating and mentally energising. Oil paint is also equally responsive to my internal thoughts and feelings. I walk the coast path or the beach near my home in Pembrokeshire and absorb; meditative space and light, magical junctures of land, sea and sky, endlessly changing colours, reflections and atmospheric conditions. I know it so well, after years of collecting observations it is ingrained. I photograph, make sketches and painted studies to get the landscape ‘under my skin’. In the studio these observations are transformed, becoming more expressive as I engage with the physicality of painting, sometimes veering towards abstraction. My style is expressive and combines a variety of methods; staining, glazing and blending in many layers, gradually building up thickness and texture. Paint is applied with brushes, knives, rags and sometimes fingers. It is painted, scraped, flicked, spattered and poured on, and sometimes off again, until the finished painting emerges. Titles are deliberately ambiguous. They emerge from phrases that cross my mind whilst I am in the studio or out in the landscape, sometimes they are excerpts from poetry, or are often just snippets of my own windswept thoughts.”
“Fire in the Heart” Oil On Canvas 41 cm x 33 cm Framed: 56 cm x 48 cm
www.sjbart.co.uk
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Michael Boffey Michael Boffey was born in Liverpool in 1971. He trained in Fine Art Painting at Loughborough College of Art and Design (1991-1994), and received an MA with Distinction in Fine Art from De Montfort University, Leicester (1995-1997). He has participated in the touring shows Flora, (with artists Emma Bennett, Anya Gallaccio, Ori Ghersht, Owen Griffiths, Ann-Mie-Melis, Jacques Nimki, Yoshihiro Suda, and Clare Twomey) and Fleursdumal in London. His work has been exhibited in many group shows including Saatchi’s New Sensations/The Future Can Wait, at Victoria House, Bloomsbury Square, London, and The National Open Art, London. Michael currently lives and has a studio in East London.
According to psychopathologists people’s abiding tendency is to avoid confronting loss. Instead, they cherish it by refusing change and subject the relics that remain to endless emotional ransacking as a continuation of their own withdrawal. Imaged in these photographic works of Michael Boffey, these remnants, here in the form of cut flowers and other domestic and ornamental paraphernalia are not superfluities then. These faded fancies have been transformed through various nominal and procedural processes, both gentle and violent, to allow a meditation on reminiscence. The playing fields of memory contain a superabundance of richly complex accounts, sometimes embellished and sometimes faded. Apparently nostalgia is a very bad thing, but despite benign advice about not to looking back, we have little idea of what our world will be like in the future. It seems that coping with the fears and pleasures of now and with those of tomorrow does necessitate acknowledgement of a past. Jean Taylor
www.michael-boffey.co.uk
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“Refracted Painting” Archival print mounted on aluminium 80 cm x 60 cm x 5 cm
“The Inflated Tear” Archival print mounted on aluminium 80 cm x 60 cm x 5 cm
Evi Antonio Evi Antonio was born in London and spent her adolescent years enveloped by an urban landscape. She dreamt of the countryside and found solace by immersing herself in the images of natural history books. This fascination with the natural world was cultivated during her teenage years and further refined as she studied Scientific and Natural history Illustration, graduating with a BA (Hons) degree in 1992. It was also at this time, Evi discovered her love for the sea when she visited a remote bird island off of the Pembrokeshire coast on a residential drawing trip. This island visit would go on to inspire and greatly impact her future work.
After graduating, Evi worked for many years as a natural history illustrator contributing to several publications using traditional watercolour techniques. She went on to run a successful illustration agency alongside her husband from their studio in a nature reserve. Evi’s dream of living in the countryside was finally realised and she was able to immerse herself in her surroundings and further develop her love and work of natural history. After raising their two children, Evi made the decision to transition into fine arts where she could fully express her artistic potential. In 2012, she was accepted and exhibited in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition where her entire edition of ‘Jono’s lobster’ sold. Following the success of this, her first solo show ‘Cimychiaid Jono’ was an exhibition of works inspired by the sea life of the Pembrokeshire coast and her collaboration with a local fisherman, ‘Jono’. From 2013, Evi’s work was motivated by emotive and spiritual experiences in her life. Loosing her father made a big impact on the themes she started exploring. One of these themes led to her winning an award in 2016 for ‘Best artist in the East of England’ for her painting ‘Papillon de nuit’’ with the National Open Art competition. Evi lives and works between her studio in the Essex countryside, Pembrokeshire and London. Since returning to the city, she is enjoying her new found perspective and looking forward to incorporating this appreciation into her future work. “Look deep into nature and then you will understand everything better”. Albert Einstein A philosophy close to my creative vision. Often as a child, I would stop and look at the moss growing on a stone or the intricate details of lichen on a twig while others walked by. My art celebrates the smaller things that often go unnoticed or are appreciated merely for their culinary or decorative values. My artistic vision is to inspire those who see my work to look more carefully at the natural world around them, see its hidden beauty and consider their worth in our ever fragile and vanishing ecosystems. All of nature inspires me but reoccurring themes reflect my passion for the sea and entomology. With an obsessive eye for detail and composition, the symmetrical forms, colours and textures of insects and crustaceans excite me. To express this vision, I have mixed old traditions with new. Digital painting techniques have enabled me to work on a much larger scale and resulting in a contemporary edge. Merging this with traditional hand painting, furthers adds aesthetic qualities and depth. The result is as if we see the subject under a magnifying glass; I want to evoke and inspire the viewer with my sense of awe and wonder and to look closer at these creatures that we share our world with.
www.eviantonio.co.uk
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“Papillon de Nuit” 90 cm x 72 cm x 5 cm framed size Digital painting hand-finished in oil on canvas. Edition 1 of 5
I became immersed in interpreting the symbolism and iconic image of this sombre creature. I was transfixed by it’s detail and beauty. This painting won the National open art, best artist for East of England Award.
The Picture Superiority Effect And Financial Markets How we see things is central to artistic perception and valuable but can be misleading in other fields The Picture Superiority Effect is one of a large number of cognitive biases that affect how we think and act. It is important to know about these biases in the context of financial markets because they can impair our decision making but also inform traders on how other market participants may react. I will first outline a cognitive bias drawing from the relevant psychological literature and then describe how that plays out in financial markets. My basic point throughout is that it is critical for market participants to know about these unavoidable biases for two reasons. Firstly, knowing about them is the first step to being able to recognise when they are operative and assessing whether they have resulted in an optimal decision, with specific relevance here to trading decisions. Secondly, since no-one is free of these biases, traders can expect that other market players will be influenced by them and trade accordingly. The Picture Superiority Effect is relatively straightforward. What psychologists have found is that people find it easier to remember images than words. There are different opinions in the literature as to why this might be. In my view, the effect is likely to be explained by our preference for the vivid and concrete over the dull and abstract; but in fact, the causation is not that important for our purposes here. We just need to know that everyone remembers imagery more than text. This is probably no surprise; in particular in the age of social media, as pictures are shared more widely on social media than text (and so we might surmise that there is also a Video Superiority Effect which is even stronger). There is some discussion as to how age interacts with the Picture Superiority Effect. Early researchers found that younger people recalled more pictures than words while older subjects did not, suggesting that the Picture Superiority Effect exists only in younger people. More recent work, however, appears to find the exact opposite. Given the general improvement in experimental methodologies that occurs over time and the parallel increase in knowledge, I would say that the more recent studies are more likely to be correct. But that observation remains subject to further confirmation/disconfirmation. As a result, there have been some suggestions that what is happening is that images work as a compensation mechanism for older adults who are experiencing memory deficits. So the overall story may be that younger people are prone to the Picture Superiority Effect, middle age adults are less prone to it, and then older people embrace the effect for compensation purposes. This would mean something like older people are deliberately relying more on pictures to assist them in remembering things. There is also advice from the intelligence community (!) to the effect that the way to remember a lot of items without writing them down is to modify a visual memory of a very familiar location, such as one’s home, and add to it strange and striking items which represent the data one wishes to remember. All of this means that everyone who is involved in financial markets can expect that the Picture Superiority Effect will play a role in their thinking to a differing extent at various life stages. How would this work? This type of point — how do cognitive biases affect our performance in financial markets — is one I discuss at length in my book: https://www.routledge.com/The-Psychology-of-Successful-Trading-Behavioral-Strategies-for-Profitability/Short/p/ book/9781138096288 We all remember photos of people who had been fired from Lehman Bros. after it collapsed in the crisis. These pictures and ones like them are extremely easy to remember. In fact, they are difficult to forget. This sort of thing might make you unreasonably averse to buying bank shares. It is probably wise to set aside the limited information value represented by imagery and focus on the data — which may of course be presented graphically without being just a photo. Unless you are just appreciating an artwork!
This book is the first to demonstrate the practical implications of an important, yet under-considered area of psychology in helping traders and investors understand the biases and attribution errors that drive unpredictable behaviour on the trading floor. Readers will improve their chances of trading successfully by learning where cognitive biases lead to errors in stock analysis and how these biases can be used to predict behaviour in market participants.
www.routledge.com