W+G Artists

BIOGRAPHIES OF ARTISTS & PHOTOGRAPHERS IN THE W&G COLLECTION It is not always possible to acquire detailed biographical information. Many artists and photographers are very private individuals and prefer to let their paintings or photographs speak for themselves. However, we have attempted to provide a brief guide to the lives of many of these talented people and to give an insight into their work which we hope you will find interesting.

ROSEMARY ABRAHAMS

PETER ADAMS

Having studied painting at Leeds College of Art in the 60s, Rosemary has in the last decade returned to both the north of England, and to the full time pursuit of her first love, painting. Her career as a painter has for many years run parallel to her other activity, that of leading a design studio with a worldwide client base.

A 2003 winner of Travel Photographer of the Year, and a 2004 judge, Peter Adams spends much of the year travelling. The majority of his images are used in calendars, books and websites.

While she continues to provide a design service for a select group of clients, her commitment and creativity is now devoted to her painting. The work has developed along two quite distinct paths, one with a strong figurative base, the other exploring purely colour and formal relationships, while sharing many common elements.

Landscape has always provided a strong influence and source of inspiration to Rosemary, recording the landscape of each of the locations in which she has lived and also many through which she has travelled.

The other strand of Rosemary’s painting follows the abstract route, exemplified by the use of simple shapes to balance the composition, and where the major concerns are with surface, colour saturation, texture, proportion, line, and tone.

The result is a body of work with discernable common features, but which manifests infinite variety in its realisation. The scale of the work encompasses the ‘public’, with canvasses of over 2m through to intimate pieces, intense visual statements of no more than 15cm square. The surface of the work is enriched by the use of a thick gesso ground which can be incised to create line work, and which permits the application of both colour washes, and saturated colour. The pieces are further enriched by the application of metal foils, and pearlescent pigments.

Abrahams cites as influences Ben Nicholson, Terry Frost, the St Ives School, acknowledging Tapies, and the New York School of Rothko, and Rauschenberg. She continues the tradition of abstract expressionism into todays art world.

In terms of which images sell, Adams recognises that travel shots involving people do well for him, if only because they tend to be more unique than an icon like the Eiffel Tower or Taj Mahal.

“They’re one-offs that are not going to be imitated,” he reasons.

“I love the idea of leaving my cameras behind in the hotel and just going for a wander,” he says “but I’m paranoid that if I do there will be an amazing shot just round the corner that I’ll miss. Also, your first impressions are the strongest so you need to capture the things that are different straightaway, before it becomes familiar.”

As well as covering specific scenes and subjects that are likely to be the core stock sellers, look for more unusual subjects - details, patterns, abstracts and so on; things that have visual appeal as well as being symbolic of a place. More and more picture buyers look for less obvious images.

“There are no real rules,” says Peter. “I don’t believe in overly examining past sales lists as many photographers do, because I feel I’d just end up repeating myself. Iconic images can sell well, but there are lots of good ones out there already. I think the key is to get a breadth of images. I like to take generic images that sum up a place, but I also try and shoot people because those pictures are individual and can’t be easily copied. I can’t really tell what will sell. Maybe there is one thing on a trip that you know is going to be successful, but I just go along looking for good pictures; for images that please me.”

MEL ALLEN Living and working in London as a professional photographer, Mel shoots a wide range of commercial projects for both British and foreign clients. His still life work often involves everyday objects that have been treated in such a way that it provides the viewer with a different perspective.

When the pressures of commercial work are over, Mel’s love of photography will have him straight back into the studio shooting for his own personal

Peter Adams

pleasure. A series of flower images was one such project.

PAUL ALMASY Paul Almasy, born in 1906, was a pioneer of photojournalism. For more than six decades he travelled the world with his camera and during this time took about 120,000 photographs.

Almasy termed his oeuvre an “archive of the world”, cataloguing the photographs by country – and for each country he visited he then sorted the photographs by category: state, economy, culture, everyday life, animals and plants being but a few of them. In this way, he established a detailed and comprehensive picture archive that today constitutes a unique document of 20th century history.

Paul Almasy’s work bears witness to his interest in the fabric of society and his preference for things foreign. His blackand-white work focuses almost always on people. Almasy is not concerned here with social class or milieu: he photographed the powerful men of his time, Bohemian artists in Paris, but also midwives in Africa, rice farmers in Indonesia and street children in Mexico.

Even where Almasy addresses poverty and distress, he never does this as a voyeur but participates respectfully in what he sees while preserving his distance as an observer. It was an approach he internalized: “When I took photographs I never crouched down like a cat about to pounce on its prey. I never attacked with my camera.” Paul Almasy always viewed himself as a photojournalist and never as a photographer. He wanted his pictures primarily to inform the viewer, meaning that the form was never to outweigh the content.

Nevertheless, Almasy’s photographs are entrancing, attesting as they do to his unerring eye for subject matter, angle and cropping.

At the tender age of 17 Paul Almasy left his native Budapest and after various interludes, among others in Vienna and Munich, he ended up in Paris. It was the city that was to become the second home and main point of reference for the self-taught photojournalist – and it was likewise his gateway to the world. It was from here that he set out on his countless world trips on behalf of WHO, UNESCO or UNICEF. For a time, Paul Almasy was a visiting professor lecturing at the Sorbonne. He became French citizen in 1956. In September 2003, Paul Almasy died at the age of 97 in Paris.

PEDRO ALVAREZ Pedro Alvarez was born in Argentina in 1962. His family moved to California when Alvarez was in his early teens settling in the small town of Carmel on the Pacific coast. After graduating, his

first career was a long way from the artistic one that eventually he would find - electrical circuitry! However, at the age of 30, Alvarez found true love and married his dance partner, Jennifer.

Pedro says that it was his passion for dancing that, in many ways, transferred itself into painting which he took up with increasing enthusiasm a few years ago. The majority of his canvases pertain to dance themes, particularly those from his South American homeland such as the tango. Alvarez is a prolific artist and the speed at which he works is clearly revealed in his style of fast, sweeping brushstrokes. In 2005, he moved to Europe and now resides with his wife and family in southern Spain KIM ANDERSON Kim Anderson’s photography career, now overseen from his home base in a Swiss mountainside village, began the way of many shutter bugs. His early photos focused on fashion and people, as well as photography for advertising agencies.

While attaining success in the European marketplace as a talented photographer, Anderson also turned his lens to capturing his young daughter Nicola at play with her friends. The universal innocence and captivating antics of children entranced him. The resulting photographs evoke soul filled feelings of happiness, wonder, innocence and tenderness and of childhood days gone by.

During recent years, Anderson (whose given name is Bertram Bahner) has touched the hearts of millions of fans with his series of simple, heartfelt photographs of children. His signature style is the hand coloured detail Anderson adds to his photos, such as a single red rose, a bouquet of bright yellow flowers or the soft brown fur of a well loved teddy bear. The children in Anderson’s extensive photo gallery are frequently captured in oversized floppy hats, knee length suit jackets and bulky sweaters with rolled up sleeves.

Anderson is assisted by his wife, Monika, a talented photo stylist who selects the enchanting assortment of props used in Anderson’s photographs and imbues his work with her unique, but simple sense of style. Their daughter, Nicola, and son, Manuel, round out the family photo album with frequent stints as models for their father’s best-selling work.

NICK ANDREW “I studied art and design at Oxford Brookes, followed by graphic design at the London College of Printing and then fine art at Cheltenham College of Art. Here I immersed myself in painting- still

Nick Andrew

daydreaming, but making the daydreams real with shape and form and colour. Since then I have exhibited my work in galleries throughout the UK and in Europe and have paintings in public and private collections throughout the world. I have worked on commissions for a wide range of locations, from cruise ships to hospitals. I have also continued teaching, which has become an important part of my life: it gives me a great feeling to see my students developing and finding their own individual ways of making art.”

“In the mid nineties I moved to part of an old watermill by the River Wylye in South Wiltshire. This is my studio and home where I live with my family. It is surrounded with water meadows, forest and downland. Everything I need is here: a perfect home, a wonderful family and a landscape that I can immerse myself in whenever I like!”

“My main inspiration is the landscape immediately around my studio. I base most of my river paintings on the River Wylye which flows close by: a fresh chalk stream full of life and movement.

I have got to know a 2-mile stretch of the river very well over the years - I know where to find particular plants and flowers, I know where the adders live and I know where the herons like to fish. There are still more and more things to discover, though, and I don’t think I’ll ever tire of it. It changes dramatically from hour to hour, day to day and season to season, giving me all the pattern, colour and movement I need.”

“I can’t wait to get started on a painting.

This impatience means that rather than planning out the design beforehand, I tend to dash straight in. It’s these early physical, spontaneous stages in making a picture that I enjoy the most. I start with the canvas or paper on the studio floor and soak it thoroughly with a water spray. Then the fun begins: I load my paintbrush with wet paint and swiftly cover the surface with big, bold blocks of colour which slowly diffuse and blend together. I have a preliminary idea in my mind of how I want the painting to turn out and I also have reference photos and sketches to hand, but it’s in these initial stages, when the paint flows and merges across the canvas surface, that new possibilities suggest themselves and I often have to revise my plans.”

“Acrylic paints offer me all I need in a medium. They are incredibly versatile.

At college I used them in mixed media with charcoal, oil pastels and collage.

Since then I have used them to create watercolour washes, blocks of flat colour like a gouache, or heavy and impasto like oils. Once the painting has dried I can re- wet it and apply more

layers of transparent colour using gestural marks and strokes. Each painting is built- up through several stages like this before it goes up on an easel. At this point I can make an assessment of the design and make adjustments and additions, still using mostly decorating brushes of various sizes and conditions.”

“As I want my work to appear fresh and lively, I avoid overworking at any stage by always having other pieces of work on the go. I also let each painting ‘rest’ for periods of time between stages. This process can take anything up to a month, until eventually I can complete the piece with smaller marks and touches made with finer brushes.”

LOUISE ANGLICAS Roy Avis

Born in 1973 in Lancashire, England, Anglicas gained a degree in ceramic design, from Staffordshire University, in the heart of the potteries, where she won the award ‘Best student of the Year’ in 1994. Here she studied a course that allowed her to combine her two favourite disciplines of printmaking and ceramics. Louise loved the experimentation afforded her with all the fantastic effects and surprises of colour and texture that could be created with a kiln.

Here too, her love of surface pattern evolved, coupled with the challenge of applying it to different products in an industrial sense.

Naturally, this led to a passion for designing with trends, changing lifestyles and different markets in mind, and this has grown ever since and is the challenge she strives to bring to her designs today.

After a work placement at Wedgwood,England’s finest china company, Anglicas graduated and embarked on a career working for a large local tableware manufacturer.

Here she worked on all things ceramic that sold through to major retail outlets. Her favourite achievements were to help secure the ‘Harry Potter’ bid and have her design selected for the Millennium celebrations aboard the P&O flagship Aurora cruiseliner.

ROY AVIS Born in Greenwich, London in 1945, it is fitting that Roy paints London scenes. He has spent his life seeing the beautiful metropolitan skyline change, and where else than from Greenwich can you see London change the most?

Roy’s compositions focus on capturing the introduction of a

new building to the horizon or highlighting how a building is lit, and studying its effect on the shape of the skyline and its relationship with the Thames.

Like many artists before him he enjoys painting the contrast of man’s artificial impact on the earth with the natural reflections of water and how light plays between them.

However the city inhabits only the bottom fifth of the paintings, allowing room for magnificent skies which with changing moods and cloudscapes add a narrative element to tell the story of the city. How light plays and bends in the city’s pollution, celestial reflections from sodium lights - even dust and fine sand from a far distant storm swept over to our shores - creates a changing horizon line above cloud level to the clear night sky. Roy paints in a scale mimicking the expanse of a vista we too often take for granted. It gives his work a double horizon with three bands – water separating cloud and sky with a band of city, then sky, seemingly separated from space by ozone – the limit of man’s impact – with the unknowable expanse of space beyond.

Roy is painstaking in his attention to detail, almost as if he was a cartographer and chronicler of the city, and not an artist.

AYUTTHAYA Ayutthaya is one of Thailand’s historical and majestic highlights. Serving as the Thai capital for over four hundred years between the 14th and 18th centuries, it was once glorified as one of the biggest cities in south-east Asia. During the 17th century, most foreign visitors to Ayutthaya, traders or diplomats alike, claimed Ayutthaya to be the most illustrious and glittering city that they had ever visited. The name was chosen by a young Thai sculptor called Suchart Srisai to represent his life size bronze sculptures.

Srisai’s style reflects not only his disciplined beliefs, but also those of other Buddhist cultures, hence the title of one of his pieces, Buddha Sakyamuni, who lived in India over 2,500 years ago..

BERTRAM BAHNER See Kim Anderson SANDRO BALDINI Born in 1951, Baldini is an Italian painter and illustrator who has lived mainly in England since the late 1960s.

Baldini turned to painting professionally after working in a small gallery in London that he had managed and subsequently owned for over twenty years. Although having occasionally put brush to paper as a means of relaxation during this time he was unaware until later in life of his other creative talents.

Now based in the Dordogne area of France, Baldini continues to paint neoabstracts and has recently produced a number of pieces showing the subtle variations of colour that nature provides in early morning and at sunrise.

TREFOR BALL Ball graduated from art college in Plymouth, England in the late 1960s, immediately moving to London and joining the ranks of the music press.

During this period he worked for for New Musical Express, Sounds, Zig Zag, and Melody Maker documenting many pop music icons of the time.This work lasted into the punk era of the late 1970s.

Ball moved into education and spent a number of years helping fulfil the creative desires of students including winning various photographic competitions on their behalf such as those for major brands Wrangler and Olympus He says this was a very rewarding period and enabled him to also work commercially, for example having created many covers for various publishers including Penguin.

Having recently left education, Ball’s endeavours are now in the realm of fine art prints and “searching for the elusive book deal.”

LUCY BARNARD Barnard was born in Cheltenham, England in the hot summer of 1976 and grew up in the beautiful Gloucestershire countryside, later going on to gain qualifications in art and a degree in illustration.

She says, “My Grandmother was fantastic, a real character and very inspirational. She attended the Slade School of Art when she was young and had many tales to tell.

My mother and my sisters are also very creative.”

Lucy goes on to say that she gets inspiration from people and places all around her. Her work is all done by hand starting with sketches and then using oil or acrylic and often finished with coloured pencils.

“I feel that I still have a lot to learn and that my art will develop and grow as I gain more experience. I’d like to experiment with using the computer as another tool and hope to start some bigger paintings on canvas too – scaling up, as most of

Trefor Ball

my work is on a smaller scale at the moment.”

RICHARD BERENHOLTZ Richard Berenholtz received a master’s degree in architecture from Columbia University in 1974 and subsequently worked as a designer. During that time his hobby of photography became a passion leading to three one-man shows in New York galleries. In 1984, Berenholtz left architecture to pursue a full-time career as a commercial photographer. In the past 17 years he has had three photography books published: ‘Manhattan Architecture,’ ‘Inside New York’ and ‘Panoramic New York.’ He has also produced what he considers to be one of the most comprehensive collections of photographs of New York.

HAMISH BLAKELY “I come from a theatrical background.

I’m half Irish and my childhood home was a place where extraordinary things happened. It was an environment where my brothers and I seemed bound to do something unusual. I’m very grateful for that.”

“Drawing was the original expression. I would draw an awful lot, trying to emulate other artists, to understand how they created what they did; but sketching it was and remained to be, until I found the mettle to use colour.”

“This happened long before I studied at Wimbledon School of Art and Kingston University. Having stubbornly lived in the world of black and white, I finally made myself paint - all exuberant enthusiasm and no clear direction. However, I had a breakthrough when I was 18 years old. I had painted for some time by then, but this was the first time I had made a painting so seriously, with no experimentation, just care and an urgent responsibility to get it right. It was a portrait of my Dad, and without sign or suggestion, I leapt years ahead to produce something my 18 years could have thwarted. This was the turning point. It was no longer a case of just loving painting, but realising that I could be good at it.”

“It changed everything. Painting replaced drawing completely. I only drew again at college and again, gave it up when I left. I think that I had spent so much time making preliminary studies with pencil or charcoal, opposing the commitment of using colour, I now paint immediately, considering preparatory sketches unnecessary.”

“I became an illustrator shortly after leaving college and received a national award. The need to tackle an unlimited range of subject matter, was a very useful experience. I learned a lot in painting what I did not want to, as well as what I loved.”

“As far as subject matter is concerned, I have always loved painting people, favouring glimpses of figures and anatomy. Even in the enormous, allegorical works of classical masters, I have always been drawn to confined areas of a piece - a spotlit area that reveals a rigid jaw line, or the twist in a turned neck. Often I like to have images remain that simple - paring down extraneous material to leave what feels ephemeral. Other times, I need more of a setting and the reward is in the discipline of being more representative.

Ultimately what makes me work is that, despite all the wonderful breakthroughs and milestones I have experienced in painting over the years, I never feel that I have quite nailed it. There is always more to be done, as I think it is very difficult to measure what your potential is, only the gratification that you have not yet reached it.”

“I paint immediately; covering the canvas with a colour I think will help the first detail make the best sense. This can and usually does change as the painting evolves. I do not do preparatory studies, as I prefer to resolve everything on the canvas. I know what I want to paint, but have often changed composition and colours because a better idea has turned up two days later.”

STEVE BLOOM Born in South Africa in 1953, Bloom moved to London during the late seventies where he founded a photographic stills special-effects company. In the early nineties, during a safari holiday, his interest in wildlife photography emerged, and within a short time he had swapped his established career for the precarious life of a travelling photographer. Such a move demands an added measure of uncompromising passion and commitment. His concern for the environment is strongly evident in his images; he strives to capture the animal's spirit, and blur the lines separating different species.

Steve Bloom’s award-winning work, specialising in evocative images of the natural world, is widely published, and his books, which include Untamed, Elephant! and Spirit of the Wild have been published in twenty languages.

His Spirit of the Wild photographic exhibitions are major outdoor events in city centres and are seen by millions of people.

WILLIAM ADOLPHE BOUGUEREAU The career of William Bouguereau, unlike that of his contemporaries, the then avant-garde Impressionists, was one of ever-increasing success without significant setback. He was born on the west coast of France into a family of wine (later olive oil) merchants and was given a classical education by his uncle

Steve Bloom

Eugène who also arranged for him to take drawing lessons. Such was his ability that after only two years of parttime study, he won first prize in the figure-painting class at the Bordeaux Ecole des Beaux-Arts.

With the help of money earned from painting portraits of his uncle’s parishioners, at the age of 21 William went to Paris to train in the studio of FrançoisEdouard Picot. Chosen as a contestant for the Prix de Rome in the years of 1848 and 1849 (ten contestants were admitted each year), he was finally awarded the prize in 1850. As was the tradition, the winner was sent to Rome for four years to study at the Villa Medici where the techniques of the classical and Renaissance masters were taught. While there he also took the opportunity to travel extensively throughout the country locating and copying many Renaissance masterpieces and visiting towns and lakes which had inspired the landscape artists. The influences from this period are readily apparent in all his future work.

Returning to Paris in 1854, Bouguereau regularly exhibited at the Salon and was awarded many commissions for portraits and decorative series.

Throughout his later career he gained much official and public recognition, gaining many awards. Bouguereau was also a respected teacher and in 1881 was elected president of the painting section of the Paris Salon. In 1883 he became president of the benevolent Society of Painters, Architects, Sculptors, Engravers and Designers, which promoted and attended to the welfare of new and struggling artists.

In 1879 Bouguereau became engaged to the young American artist Elizabeth Jane Gardner (1837-1922) who was his neighbour in Montparnasse, but their wedding was initially opposed by his daughter Henriette and also his mother, not until whose death at the age of 91 in 1896 were they able to marry, and they lived together happily for the few remaining years of his life.

Each summer Bouguereau would return to his birthplace of La Rochelle to paint in his studio he had built there and it was there that he died in 1905 after several years of heart disease. He is buried in the famous cemetery of Montparnasse, near where he had lived in Paris. He declared that he was only really happy when painting and indeed he completed almost 700 canvases during his long career.

PETER BROWN Brown was born in 1953 in Burnley, England. “We lived above the family florist business till I was 15 and was

influenced by being surrounded by all that fantastic colour and floral art in contrast to all the black, hard grittiness of a cold, dirty Northern mill town. We had no bathroom; hot running water and the toilet was down the bottom of the yard next to the coalhole. I was determined to do better in life!”

“The methods I employ in my artwork are to take a subject that interests me at the time and try to give it a unique twist; often incorporating repeated imagery with my design background coming into play here. Sometimes I take photos and distort them on my computer, playing with the colours and contrasts then use these images to form a basis for my work.”

“When people ask about my career I describe myself as an artist without the angst, a bit of a chameleon, ready to change and be flexible to produce art people want to buy.”

ALEX BURNETT Born in Aberdeen, Scotland in 1977, Burnett’s childhood was spent on a farm in the north-east of the country.

“I loved to record my surroundings in drawings and paintings from an early age. I studied illustration at Edinburgh College of Art. This course enabled me to merge my love of the written word with my passion for drawing. I developed the skills that help me today: printmaking, painting and how to finish a project on time.”

“My style has been influenced by the work of contemporary Scottish artists, such as Barbara Rae and Victoria Crow who create vibrant pieces of art depicting the landscape and its people. I also look at trends in fashion and interiors. I have a large collection of textile samples and magazine clippings to help eradicate artists’ block!”

“I use acrylics, other water based media and collage techniques to create my work. I like to be versatile with methods and styles so I enjoy developing contemporary and more classical pieces. The majority of my work is rich in colour and texture and I like to incorporate patterns and text into designs.”

JANE-ANN BUTLER Born in Devizes, England, a market town surrounded by beautiful countryside, Jane’s interest in photography came at the age of ten after her parents gave her a Polaroid camera.

“Photography became fun and instant,” she says.

The subject became her surroundings,

Jane-Anne Butler

details of nature. A self-taught artist, Jane experiments not only with traditional photography and Polaroid imagery, but also fully embraces the digital process. She is an exhibiting artist in England and her reputation as a fine artist continues to grow through commercial representation by international photo libraries and art publishing houses.

Butler’s art displays an intuitive response to nature through photography, capturing her subject’s physical and ethereal beauty.

CHELLIE CARROLL London based Carroll has been illustrating for the past 4 years having previously worked in-house as a designer in a number of design consultancies in London on a wide range of corporate and bespoke projects. Chellie decided to move into illustration after being commissioned to work freelance on projects such as the PlayStation 2 launch promo and the launch of BBC3 (television), relishing in the creative freedom it gave her.

Chellie’s work, which is mainly digital based, revisits the classical, traditional and beautiful aspects of graphic arts through her expressive and feminine illustrations.

CRISTIANA CEPPAS Cristiana began her photographic career in San Francisco after leaving her native Brazil. Her personal and intimate style merges human subjects with natural environments. She has a special talent for capturing and showcasing the personality and beauty of a moment.

Some of her corporate clients include AT&T, Cisco Systems, Intel, Visa, United Airlines, and Dreyers.

FRANK CHEN Frank Chen Photography is a professional wedding, editorial, commercial, and assignments photography service studio now based in Shanghai, China, having moved from the US. Chen also takes assignments for publishers and other business interests. Frank’s objective in Shanghai is to spread the vast popular photojournalist style of wedding photography in the west to China.

CHRISTIAN COIGNY Born in 1946, Swiss photographer.

Coigny bought his first camera at the age of 19 and after studying photography, rapidly made it his career. After living for a while in San Francisco and Rio de Janeiro, he returned to Switzerland in 1976, settling in Lausanne.

CARLO COLOMBO Colombo was born in Milan in the early

1950s of Argentinian parents. After spending much of his childhood and adolescence shuffling backwards and forwards between South America and Italy, his parents having divorced when Carlo was only seven, he finally settled in Tuscany where he resides today.

One cannot think of Tuscany without thinking of the magnificent cypress tree, and so it is with Colombo’s work which is dominated by the iconic trees and palette of warm colours so typical of the region. Recent paintings reveal a movement towards a more graphical treatment and the artist has expressed an interest in furthering this style in his next series of landscapes.

WENDY CORBETT “Although I did art to A-level standard I never really considered it as a career option as my real ambition was to work with animals. However, as a youngster I was discouraged by teachers from doing this, who suggested that I think of a ‘real’ job instead. This was reason that I actually ended up becoming a teacher. On doing this job I found that I was not suited to it at all and subsequently left with absolutely no idea what I was going to do.”

“Over a period of time I tried my hand at a variety of jobs ranging from farming to forklift truck driving, with no real sense of direction. In my late 30’s I worked with my father as a sign writer and lettering artist for a number of years, until computers and modern technology put me out of a job. Again I had to rethink what career path I wanted to take. I had been experimenting again with my art in any spare time that I had, doing animal commissions and trying out different mediums and techniques.”

“It had long been a dream of mine to live by the coast and one day I made a spur of the moment decision to move to Devon, with the intention of one day becoming a full-time artist.”

“My first real opportunity to show my art came when a gallery in Kingsbridge, where I live, changed hands and I plucked up the courage to go and show them my portfolio. I was delighted when the owners took some pieces to try, and I’m glad to say that, I haven’t looked back since.”

“The two subjects I paint are my two great passions - wildlife and the sea. I hope that, because they stir something deep within me, I transfer that to my work. Whether I am working on wildlife drawings or pastel seascapes I tend to lose myself in my work; I become completely absorbed and the time just flies by. I study the animals I draw in great detail, from books, film, and visits to my local zoo at Paignton, who do lots

Christian Coigny

of environmental and conservation work. I know the animals do not behave in the same way as they do in their natural environment, but it affords me the opportunity to observe them at close quarters. In a lot of the enclosures the only thing that separates you from the animals is a huge sheet of what I am sure is very toughened glass.

At such close range you can feel the power of these magnificent creatures who wouldn’t be inspired by this?”

“The photos I use have to say something to me, I do seem to be particularly drawn to that special bond between mother and baby, there is just so much love there that it is almost tangible. I try to convey that ‘magic’ that initially inspired me and hope to make the drawing come to life.”

“I started using pastels fairly recently and I’m amazed that I had neglected this wonderful medium for so many years. Pastels are instant, I can put on broad sweeps of colour and the card is transformed. I start by putting on the colours very roughly, which gives me the mood of the picture. I work on card, which has a sand texture. This suits my style as it allows me to put the pastels on quite thickly and merge them together creating a feeling of movement, which is perfect for my subject, be it clouds or sea. I put on layers of different colours and then blend them, creating either a soft feeling for the sky or rolling waves and surf of the sea - I just let it ‘happen’.”

“In stark contrast, my wildlife drawing is very intense; it can take several weeks to complete one piece. I sketch in the composition very lightly and then build up the pencil working from light to dark; it is very much a continual thinking process. These pictures take much longer to come together. They can sometimes be almost finished before I know if I have got it right or not, although usually as soon as I have done the eyes it springs to life and I know if I have captured that something special the essence of the animal.”

“Using two such completely different techniques and mediums is good for me, it stops me getting stale; they compliment each other really well being such opposites.

ANDREW CRAIG Craig was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1967 and lived there until the age of six, after which his family moved south to Lincoln where he continues to live today.

“My passion for painting started at the age of thirteen when my mother bought me my first set of paints and from there my love for painting grew. Art was the only subject I was ever interested in at

school.”

“My first job as an artist was as a graphic artist for Lincoln City Council. I then moved on to a Games Workshop Design studio in Nottingham working on their monthly magazine White Dwarf. I worked with some very experienced artists there and was always asking them for advice and recommendations.

Working there gave me so much experience and helped me develop my painting style. I always remember the train journey in the morning where I’d be constantly gazing out of the window looking at the sky for ideas and inspiration. I later started work at a theatre design company and it was then when I decided I wanted art to be my full time career.”

“Most of the paintings I paint just happen with no pre-planning. I do however like to catalogue my ideas so I can go back, should I wish, to use them as a source of reference. I find listening to music while I paint extremely inspiring. I then try to transfer what I’m feeling direct onto canvas. It’s almost as if the music takes over and my mind goes into auto-pilot.”

“First thing I do is look through my designs for ideas, but I’ll usually have as good an idea of what I’m going to paint. I have always favoured acrylics as my medium and find them to be very user-friendly in terms of use, colour and drying time. I’ll start a painting with the two main block colours which are blended together. Once this is done, the rest just happens.”

TOM CROFT Tom Croft has been working as a professional artist for the last 18 years, having completed a fine art degree. He works from his studio in Oxford, England and has worked with many leading clients and companies including Manchester United Football Team, Ferrari F1, Oxford University Press, Bloomsbury Publishing and Penguin.

Tom enjoys working in a wide variety of media, including watercolour, charcoal, pencils, oils, acrylics and digital painting. His styles range from photorealistic to abstract palette knife.

SALVADOR DALÍ Salvador Dalí was born Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dalí y Domenech in the Catalan town of Figueras, Spain, on May 11, 1904. In 1921 he enrolled in the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid. His first solo show was held in 1925 at the Galeries Dalmau in Barcelona. In 1926 Dalí was expelled from the Academia and the following year he visited Paris and met Pablo Picasso. He collaborated with Louis Buñuel on the film Un Chien andalou in 1928. At the end of the year

Tom Croft

he returned to Paris and produced his first Surrealist publications and illustrated the works of Surrealist writers and poets. His first solo show in the United States took place in New York in 1933.

Dalí was censured by the Surrealists in 1934. Toward the end of the decade he made several trips to Italy to study the art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In 1940 Dalí fled to the United States, where he worked on theatrical productions, wrote, illustrated books, and painted. A major retrospective of his work opened in 1941 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and travelled throughout the United States. In 1942 Dalí published his autobiography and began exhibiting in New York. He returned to Europe in 1948, settling in Port Lligat, Spain. His first paintings with religious subjects date from 1948–49. In 1954 a Dalí retrospective was held at the Palazzo Pallavicini in Rome and in 1964 an important retrospective of his work was shown in Tokyo, Nagoya, and Kyoto. He continued painting, writing, and illustrating during the 1960s. In 1980 a major Dalí retrospective was held at the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, in Paris, and his work was exhibited at the Tate Gallery, London. The artist died on January 23, 1989, in Figueras.

BEN DAVIES English photographer Ben has had a desire to capture images from an early age but this was not truly fulfilled until his early teens when he gained possession of a simple but very effective SLR camera. This acquisition coincided with the start of a long love affair with developing and printing his own black and white photographs. This combination allowed Davies the freedom to both experiment with and to explore the fascinating art of photography.

Growing up in the country and being educated in the grounds of a cathedral, his initial photographic subjects were landscape and architecture. Over the last 25 years Ben’s photography has developed through many stages but has always strived to capture the elegance and beauty of simple forms.

In the recent years his work has developed from using the traditional photographic process to exploring the unique possibilities and challenges that digital photography offers. Alongside the technological transfer, Ben has also focused more on the studio where the desire to capture elegant and well crafted images is still as strong as ever.

JEAN DE DIEUX Jean de Dieux was born shortly after the end of the occupation of his native

Alsace. He attended school in a monastery. His childhood wish was to become a missionary and assist in the social and educational networks of the catholic church in Africa. However, in his 20s, de Dieux’s attitudes and life plans changed completely after his first encounter with a naked woman! She was a Swedish ballet dancer who used to pose for life drawing at art school.

This was to prove the birth of his carreer as an artist. The female form still remains his favourite subject and foremost passion. De Dieux now lives in Paris and on the Côte d’Azur.

YVONNE DULAC Yvonne Dulac was born in Angoulême, France in 1981 to Anglo-French parents.

The Dordogne countryside provided a beautiful backdrop for Dulac’s love of nature which she started sketching when in her early teens.

Now living in Grasse in the south of France, Yvonne paints lovingly the flowers and plants that she is surrounded by and which she sees on her travels. Dulac admits, like many creative people, to being slightly obsessive and once a new canvas has been prepared, she rarely stops painting until it is completed to her absolute satisfaction!

ALAIN DUMAS Dumas was born into an exotic and artistic family in 1977 in Marseilles, France. His father was an itinerant musician and his mother, Amandine, was a retired showgirl. Both parents raised Dumas to be an outgoing and confident individual, following their own philosophy of liberalism and freedom of expression. In addition, both parents positively encouraged the young Alain to allow his creativity to blossom.

Dumas now, almost exclusively, paints nudes – often in sensuously provocative poses – from life. His abilities to persuade young women to pose for him without hesitation were the inspiration for a novel written by his elder brother.

ALISON EDGSON Alison Edgson was born in County Down in Northern Ireland. She worked in the computer department of a bank before, as she puts it, “coming to my senses,” and studying Visual Communication at the University of Ulster in Belfast.

After graduating with a first class degree, she and her husband Jeff moved to an old chapel in the Usk Valley in Wales where she now illustrates children’s books and greetings cards. She spends most of her free time chasing her chickens out of the vegetable garden, brushing the cat and walking her two labradors.

Alison Edgson

HARVEY EDWARDS Harvey Edwards is a celebrated artist who has won worldwide critical acclaim from some of the nation’s leading reviewers. The New York Times wrote (with his) “…impeccable prints, Mr. Edwards conveys the intensity of his involvement by closing in on the telling details of a scene.” Applause comes from Art Business News, as well, reviewing Edwards as “the master of his art who has the sensitivity to express true emotions through powerful images which leave a dramatic and lasting impression.”

At the age of ten, he was given his first art lessons. He was immediately fascinated by his ability to express feelings and emotions through his medium and ultimately to create what he now calls his lithographic montage, which is the process of created his image as parts of a puzzle. Each piece is as important as the next. From the initial sketch to the final printing, there are myriad’s of steps in achieving the image as a fine art print. Even on press, Edwards controls the subtleties or intensity of colour that brings the image to life.

After serving in the Air Force as base and aerial photographer during the Vietnam War, Edwards attended the University of Miami, developing his creativity by studying painting and sculpture. By the end of the next decade, he had been honoured with over 60 one-man shows. Originally recognised for his compelling images of ballet dancers, his work now explores the byways of a broader America.

WERNER EICK Eick is a German artist, born in Aachen in 1955. He had already discovered in early childhood his inclination towards the visual arts. A self-taught painter, he experimented with various styles: Surrealism, Realism, Impressionism, Photo-realism and Abstraction, among them. Since 1988 he has also been involved in creating stage and theatre designs. Eick found the inspiration for his Island series whilst travelling. His paintings can be found in private collections in Germany, the USA and Australia.

GRANT FAINT Grant Faint is a Canadian photographer who has been shooting stock full-time since 1984. Having started his career as a TV news cameraman in Vancouver, he has travelled to over 80 countries in the past three decades. In 2004 he began a video project to mark his 50th birthday, a retrospective DVD showing him at work around the globe and highlighting 450 of his best images. The film Sognare (Italian for to dream quickly) became a fundraising tool for an orphan’s programme in Tanzania for

children who have lost parents due to HIV/AIDS. ‘Images for Orphans’ is the name Faint has chosen to underline the simple connection between his work and the need overseas. In addition, he has worked with expatriots from the war torn country of Sierra Leone in West Africa to build a school for 500 refugee children there. So why this interest?

Faint says he had wanted to join the American organisation the Peace Corp or its equal in Canada in 1972 after graduating from college, however his skill set wasn’t needed. With his present efforts, he feels the circle is now complete.

GARY FAYE Born in 1938, an American photographer based in Houston, Texas, Faye teaches photography and holds a professorship, also in Houston. He likes to spend long periods meditating in the vast open spaces and deserted wildernesses of North America. This interest reveals itself in much of his work, dealing with the zen-like quality and fascinating eeriness of deserted places.

CHRISTIAN FÉVRIER Frenchman Christian Février is a man of many talents. He is a yachting historian, and journalist of world repute, but it is first and foremost as a photographer that he is known.

Born in Dinan, in 1938, on the north coast of Brittany in France, Christian got his first smell of the sea when his parents took him on a steamer on the Rance River to visit Saint Malo. In 1950, the family moved to Casablanca for seven years. In 1957, after graduating in philosophy, Christian moved to Paris to learn graphic art at the National Modern Arts School.

Professionally he was a graphic artist but in 1964, he discovered competitive ocean racing. He found the pleasures of racing very appealing and this led him to buy a second-hand, Russian copy of a Leica - his first serious camera.

From 1967 to 1979, he moved into the marine industry, working alone to create advertising campaigns and glossy catalogues for many top international companies.

Christian was one of the first to adopt zoom lenses in 1968. “Sharpness of these first lenses was quite awful” he admits today, “but they allowed me to frame exactly what I wanted.” Another interesting aspect of Christian’s work is the attention to detail and his close-up subjects. “My 50mm lens is probably my preferred lens. Discovering all the details of a yacht fitting or eucalyptus bark at 15cm brings you a new world of beauty and stunning patterns. I waited two weeks for some golden light to

Christian Février

shoot the old bronze fairlead of the schooner Shenandoah. Shooting details at their best needs patience. I am a hunter of the best light to enhance the subject.”

and Chicago Art Directors Club awards and his work has been featured several times in Photographis, the Swiss annual of the “world’s best advertising and editorial photography”.

Février has also been deeply involved with the America’s Cup since 1987 and in this capacity worked in 1995 as official photographer for the winner, Team New Zealand. During this period he came into close contact with the late Sir Peter Blake who summed up Février’s ability, “Christian Février is much more than a photographer; he is an artist, he is someone who has a passion for light, for people, for movement, for making the subject matter very special when it comes to print. He looks through his lens and sees things differently to most of us, and comes up with some extraordinary results.”

Encouraged by his mentor, the great colour photographer, Ernst Haas, who had declared Hank’s personal work “perfection”, Hank left Manhattan in 1985 to photograph the American southwest. He lived with the Hopi Tribe at Keams Canyon, Arizona, becoming the first “Anglo” photographer to be permitted to live with the tribe since it banned photography on the reservation in 1911. Hank chose this locality because the Hopi Mesas are the centre of the Four Corners area which was the focal point of his photography. Hank became a member of the Hopi community, teaching photography at Northland Pioneer College on the reservation. Earning the trust of the tribe, Hank was commissioned by many Hopi tribal members to do their portraits.

ANDREA FONTANA Fontana was born in Greece in 1965 but has lived in Avignon France for the last two decades. Her work is almost exclusively large, bold florals and landscapes that display her love of the open air.

Her large canvases veer a fluctuating path between stark white, almost bleached out, backgrounds to the opposite, dense black expanses that almost swallow the floral subjects.

Her personal interest in the work of other artists is predominantly that of abstraction. However, Fontana says that whenever she has painted abstract works herself she is always dissatisfied with the results and paints over them!

HANSJÖRG FURRER Hansjörg Furrer was born in 1945 in Basel, Switzerland, but spent most of his adolescence in Zurich. After studying fashion and textile design in Switzerland, he continued his education in Paris and Italy where he gradually developed a uniquely expressive style.

Extensive travel in Far Eastern countries, with their rich cultural heritage and exotic lifestyles, remain his main sources of inspiration. Furrer says his work symbolises lust for life and the consequent pleasure this brings.

His mixed media work, with its engaging use of line and colour, creates dynamic forms of expression – images which are capable of lifting the observer into a fresh world of light and form.

HANK GANS Hank Gans became a successful commercial photographer in 1975, working for high profile corporate clients such as AT&T, Ciba Geigy, Kodak, Merrill Lynch, Johnson & Johnson and Barclay’s and First Union Banks. Over the years he has won many New York

After three years in the mile high desert, Hank left the Hopi mesas to settle in coastal Maine. In 1993 he was the stills photographer for a feature film being shot on location on Cape Cod. Solving a logistic problem for a producer brought about his becoming production manager of the feature and, eventually, one of its producers. The film won several international film festivals in 1994. This led to additional production work for other films in Hollywood, California. Hank’s total involvement in film production during this time drew him away from photography as a profession and an art.

In 2000 his love for still photography and marriage to his wife, Nicole, brought Hank back to the New York area where he re-established himself as a commercial and fine art photographer and continues his exploration of the world through his colour photography.

ALDO GEROSA Born in 1938 to Italian parents in Baltimore, USA, Gerosa spent much of his life near the sea. His early work was very representational and showed his love of ships and boats, the sea and life on the waves.

A keen yachtsman, Gerosa’s work developed into a quasi-abstract style which, although essentially large fields of colour, still managed to convey the delights of small yachts propelled by the wind.

Now in later life, Aldo still sails frequently but paints less prolifically, producing one or two new pieces a year.

GOVINDER “My art training began in Bradford in the north of England, where I studied graphic design for three years in the

Hank Gans

early 1980s. After that I then went on to study for a Higher Diploma in Graphic Design, specialising in illustration, at Lincoln Art College.”

for her unique covers and fashion pages for Harper’s Bazaar. At the age of 23, Milton was referred to as ‘Colour photography’s wonder boy’.

“Once I completed all my formal training I decided to move to London, approaching all of the major city publishers with my portfolio. It was there that I worked on illustrations for children’s books, and after six months moved to Cambridge where I continued working as a freelance illustrator.”

The majority of Milton’s work in the 50s and 60s appeared in major national publications; in fact, Greene, along with other eminent photographers such as Richard Avedon, Cecil Beaton, Irving Penn, and Norman Parkinson, is credited for bringing fashion photography into the realm of fine art.

“Upon moving back to my home town of Saltaire, I took up the position of designer for a greetings card company, which involved all aspects of product design and development. Following that I became a photographic art director, directing fashion shoots all over the world. I did this for the next year or so until 1993, when I decided to swap my hectic photographic job and lifestyle, for a quieter life back in Saltaire. I spent the next five years there, working freelance on card designs with major publishing companies.”

Although Greene was initially renowned for his high-fashion photography, it is his remarkable portraits of our most revered artists, musicians, film, and television and theatrical celebrities, which have become legendary. It was Milton’s ability as a director that enabled him to capture the qualities that best personified the real person, making each of his pictures an eloquent, unique statement as he converted his remarkable vision into compelling photographic art. Milton believed that as an artist and photographer he wanted to capture people’s beauty, which was in the heart and to show people in an elegant and natural way. His gifts were in creating rapport in which to allow yourself to be seen, as well as his flawless timing.

In 1999, Govinder entered the fine art market and rapidly had many of his works published, some being produced as ceramic sculptures.

“Many of my paintings are about good and evil – innocence and malevolence.

When I was a child I remember believing what a wonderful and happy place the world was. I loved to learn about other people in other countries and wanted to visit them all. Of course, I now realise things aren’t quite as I once imagined. It affects me deeply. It’s like living in the garden of Good and Evil. I can’t ignore it, so I depict it in the form of these innocent pictures. I leave it to the individual to look at my paintings and choose what they would like to see, innocence or malevolence – the ‘good’ or the ‘evil’!”

“Before I begin a painting, I start with a very rough preliminary colour sketch, which I may have done weeks or months ago. With the aid of these sketches, I know exactly what I’m going to paint when I’ve pinned up my canvas.

It is very spontaneous. I have all my colours pre-determined. I use solid oil bars directly onto canvas, manipulating the paint with my fingers, using no brushes. The paint reacts with the heat from my fingers and the more you work it, the more fluid it becomes. It’s a wonderful and unusual medium to work with.”

MILTON H GREENE Born in New York in 1922, Milton Greene began taking pictures at the age of 14. Before long, his keen regard for fashion and the camera found him assisting Louise Dahl-Wolfe, the distinguished fashion photographer known

The range of his subjects include such people as Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Grace Kelly, Marlene Dietrich, Sammy Davis, Jr, Elizabeth Taylor, Cary Grant, Sophia Loren, Groucho Marx, Audrey Hepburn, Andy Warhol, Judy Garland, Giacometti, Lauren Hutton, Alfred Hitchcock, Romy Schneider Sir Lawrence Olivier, Ava Gardner, Steve McQueen, Claudia Cardinale, Paul Newman, Lauren Bacall, Dizzy Gillespie, Catherine Deneuve and Norman Mailer as well as many others. But it was his unique friendship, business relationship and ensuing photographs of Marilyn Monroe for which he is most fondly remembered.

Milton first encountered Marilyn Monroe on assignment for Look Magazine. They quickly became close friends and ultimately formed their own film production company which produced Bus Stop and The Prince and the Showgirl. Before marrying Arthur Miller, Monroe lived with Milton and his family in their Connecticut farmhouse. It was during this period that Greene was able to capture some of the most beautiful photographs ever taken of Marilyn Monroe, recording her moods, beauty, talent and spirits. During their ten years together, Greene photographed Monroe in countless photographic sessions including the famous "Black" sitting.

In recent years, his photographs, prints and posters have been exhibited in major museums and galleries

Milton H Greene

throughout the world, as well as represented in many private collections.

Milton H Greene’s work will continue to be regarded as representative of an era in time, which may be gone, but will always be reflected in pictures.

NICOLA GREGORY Nicola Gregory gained a degree in illustration at Swansea College of Art, Wales in 1980 and an MA in advanced graphics at St Martins College of Art in 1982. Since leaving college she has been a successful freelance illustrator.

GUANYIN Guanyin is a pseudonym used by a young Chinese painter Suyin Gen from Tianjin, now living in Hong Kong.

Bodhisattvas are enlightened beings who have put off entering paradise in order to help others attain enlightenment. There are many different Bodhisattvas, but the most famous in China is Avalokitesvara, known in Chinese as Guanyin. Literally in the Chinese language, “Guanyin” means “observing the sounds”, which means Guanyin would always observe all the sounds from the world and always listen to requests from her worshippers.

Appropriately “Suyin” can be translated as plain, unadorned sound.

Gen’s work is dominated by enormous representations and facial close-ups of buddha figures, with gold and golden browns being very much the predominant colourways.

KRIS HARDY Kris Hardy’s background is in fine art painting and automotive design.

He was born in Nottingham, England, in 1978, where he lived until he went to university at the age of 19. Kris studied art and design at college and then vehicle design at the University of Huddersfield, where he graduated with a first class honours degree in 2000. He then went on to study at the Royal College of Art in Kensington where he gained his MA. He worked at various design studios after graduating from the Royal College of Art in 2002, including Lotus cars. Since 2003 he has concentrated solely on his paintings, which are his first and main passion.

He has exhibited in various galleries around the UK and has produced commissions for numerous bars, hair and beauty salons, restaurants and show homes in the UK and abroad. His work is varied, from an illustration style to figurative through to abstracts and abstract landscapes and cityscapes. His inspiration comes from many things, from

some of the world’s most inspiring cities, nature, his background in automotive design and even simple things like chocolate. With regards to his figurative work, the female form, his wife and some of his dearest female friends are a massive inspiration to him.

SHENER HATHAWAY An English photographer, based in London, Hathaway produces captivating nightscapes of London and the sea. His use of long exposures results in timeless pictures that exude a mysterious but gentle aura.

ROB HEFFERAN Born in Manchester, England in 1968, Hefferan was a true free spirit from the very beginning. Desperate to follow an artistic career he found discouragement round every corner, with the exception of his art teacher who recognised that his childish drawings of dinosaurs were something rather special! Ignoring the advice of his elders, he gained a place at university to study for a degree in illustration, but after a year he began to feel constrained by the limitations of the course and decided to go it alone.

Rob spent a challenging year putting together a portfolio, then set out to find work utilising his design skills in order to finance his dream of being an artist.

His exceptional versatility as a designer and illustrator won him a number of major contracts, ranging from high profile advertising campaigns to providing the artwork for children’s books, and he soon found himself in the gratifying position of making a large amount of money from doing something he really enjoyed. Yet he never allowed his considerable success to deflect him from his original aim of becoming a full time artist, and continued to spend much of his spare time painting.

JANE HIRST Jane Hirst studied Textile Design and Art History at the University of East London, graduating in 1996. Since then she has worked as a freelancer designer. Her work has included textile design for childrenswear including embroidery and print for girls and boyswear, greetings card, general stationery designs and murals. She lives in London with her husband and young son.

IVOR INNES Ivor Innes is an English photographer born in 1943 in the north-east of England. After college, Innes, at the young age of 23, became head of department at an early and newly formed media studies course at Plymouth College of Art and Design in Devon.

Kris Hardy

In his early 30s, Innes moved back to his native Hull on the east coast and established a highly successful photographic business working not only for local companies but also for large corporate organisations.

EDUARDO JINDANI Jindani was born in Rajasthan, India in 1968. In early adolescence the family moved to northern England.

Eduardo acquired a place at one of the country’s most prestigious art colleges and gained a degree. His intention to have a ‘gap’ year subsequently turned into a ‘gap’ decade as he travelled to all corners of the world. Jindani visited almost every country in Africa, in the process absorbing many vastly different cultures and influences along the way.

Although now settled for much of the time in Bangalore, India, Jindani continues to paint the exotic and fascinating people he has met over the years on his travels.

STEVE JOHNSTON Born in Glasgow in 1956 Johnston grew up in Dumfries and studied at art school. Upon leaving, he became an apprentice electrician for a brief period, as he was uncertain of where his artistic path lay. In 1973, Carlisle College offered him a placement, where, during the second year, he opted for a change in medium, preferring photography to painting. He found black & white formats extremely inspiring and exciting to work with, seeing himself, in fact, as an artist but utilising a camera rather than paint. After leaving college he moved to London where he did freelance work for teen magazines, which led to work for Vogue in 1977. This style of photo launched the first issue of i-D magazine in 1980, where he worked for the the next decade. In 1991, when photography was proving less inspirational for him, he started painting seriously again, concentrating once again on the medium that he had originally embraced. “It was then that something clicked and I have not looked back since – painting is my life.”

Johnston is always drawn to figures that create a great shape. Details such as how someone is standing or what they are doing come into play afterwards. It is the graphic shape of the ‘body mass’ that inspires the first ideas. Certain images can unlock powerful emotions which are separate from what the actual content of the picture could create if focused on in more detail.

He attempts to take the voyeur somewhere with a sense of the familiar that has an almost ephemeral and ethereal quality, rather than somewhere specific.

With the same reasoning, he does not depict figures to be anyone in particular.

“The aim is to portray an essence and emotion rather than a well defined and precise person or location, as I am not interested in set narrative pieces.”

CRAIG JOINER Craig had been an enthusiastic amateur photographer for over 25 years when in 2005 he decided to turn professional.

Now a successful landscape photographer, Craig specialises in seascapes and landscapes of the South West region of Great Britain.

His work has been published worldwide in books, magazines, travel guides, calendars, prints and he regularly writes articles for the photographic press in the UK. MICHAEL KENNA Craig Joiner

Born in Widnes, England 1953, Michael Kenna has been looking at landscapes in ways quite out of the ordinary. His mysterious photographs, often made at dawn or in the dark hours of night, concentrate primarily on the interaction between the ephemeral atmospheric conditions of the natural landscape, and human-made structures and sculptural mass. Kenna is a diurnal and nocturnal photographer, fascinated by times of day when light is at its most pliant. With night time exposures of up to ten hours, his photographs often record details that the human eye is not able to perceive.

Kenna’s intimate, exquisitely crafted black and white prints reflect a sense of refinement, respect for history, and thorough originality. His work has been shown in numerous gallery and museum exhibitions in Asia, Australia, Europe and the United States, and is included in such permanent collections as The National Gallery, Washington, DC, The Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, The Museum of Decorative Arts, Prague and The Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

In 2001, Kenna was made a Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters by the Ministry of Culture in France.

GUSTAV KLIMT Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) was one of the most innovative and controversial artists of the early twentieth century.

The son of an engraver, he studied at the State School of Applied Arts in Vienna. In the 1880s and 1890s he produced murals for public buildings — including Vienna’s Burgtheater and new Kunsthistorisches Museum (Art History Museum) — in the prevailing classicalrealist style. Klimt’s style grew increasingly experimental, however, and his murals for Vienna University, commissioned by the State in 1894, were roundly attacked by critics for their fantastical imagery and their bold, decorative style. Partly in response to

this reaction, in 1897 Klimt helped form the Secession, a group of artists dedicated to challenging the conservative Academy of Fine Arts. Influenced

by European avant-garde movements represented in the annual Secession exhibitions, Klimt’s mature style combined richly decorative surface patterning with complex symbolism and allegory, often with overtly erotic content.

After 1900 he concentrated on portraits and landscapes, although he also produced two of his greatest murals during this period — The Beethoven Frieze, exhibited at the Secession in 1902, and decorations for the Palais Stoclet in Brussels. Klimt spent most of his summers on the Attersee, near Salzburg, where he drew inspiration for many of his landscapes, and where he painted some of his best-known works, including The Kiss of 1907-8.

KATE KNIGHT Born in 1979, Kate Knight is a Scottish designer who produces fine art designs using a vivid and positive style. This young artist loves experimenting with a bright palette and her bold approach to design allows her to produce artwork that is full of exciting and contrasting colours.

Kate often combines the traditional techniques of drawing and painting with the use of computer technology. This allows her to integrate photographic and hand drawn elements of work into a single image.

Kate won several awards whilst studying for her Honours and Masters degrees. Having left art college a few years ago she is now considered to be one of Scotland’s up and coming artistic designers.

ROBIN KONI Koni received his art education in England at the Rochester School Of Art & Design, where he graduated in 1985 with a distinction in Illustration. After a spell producing record album cover art in the 90s for a number of major recording studios, Robin joined forces with a London based agency where he created a plethora of poster art that defined the next decade.

Robin’s art endured the test of time by being featured on a myriad selection of merchandise from skate boards to t-shirts, stationery to bedding, along with thousands of jigsaw puzzles.

In the year 2000, Robin switched from brushes and

paint to the computer, and started producing artwork digitally. This led to an expansion into animation, leading to a nomination at the 2001 Copenhagen 3D Animation Festival.

Koni now lives with his wife and young son on the south coast of Britain.

THOMAS KRUESSELMANN Thomas Kruesselmann shoots beauty, hair, fashion and lifestyle photography for international clients and agencies.

His signature-style can be described as minimalist with very high attention to detail, but his work never lacks the human touch which, in his opinion, is essential to every image depicting people. Thomas directs his in-house retouching artist in the same way: “I am a photographer - don’t make it look like a painting, please!”

PACO RAPHAEL KRIJNEN Born 1975 in The Hague, Netherlands, Paco graduated at The Hague’s university as an Interactive Media Designer. On leaving university he rapidly made a decision to follow his passion for graphic design and worked, amongst others, for MTV. Krijnen currently freelances for several agencies and companies worldwide.

CHRISTIAN RIESE LASSEN Lassen is Hawaii’s premier marine artist. His paintings and sculptures are displayed in galleries across the United States and Japan, and his images grace an eclectic array of merchandise, from greeting cards to jigsaw puzzles, wristwatches to scuba gear. Meticulous and imaginative, Christian’s paintings depict an idealised vision of the natural world, and in particular the ocean he so loves.

Working in acrylics, enamels and oils, Lassen captures brilliantly hued butterfly fish, Moorish idols, sombreeyed sea turtles gliding through clean blue waters, while above the light of late afternoon illuminates a lush green island. On other canvases, dolphins frolic below the surface of a deep-water tropical harbour and humpback whales move majestically through their watery realm or leap triumphantly into ours.

When he was still a child, Christian’s family moved to the Hawaiian island of Maui; the ocean has always been a part of his life. A world-class surfer and windsurfer, Christian has travelled the globe in search of the perfect wave. “It is only through this direct observation of the ocean that I can accurately paint its magnificence,” he says. Inevitably, that intimate connection awakened Christian’s concern, transforming him into one of the world’s leading environmental artists.

Robin Koni

MIRA LATOUR Born 1959 in southern Spain. Latour’s extensive travels to China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Japan and other Far Eastern countries have clearly proved influential and the majority of her work contains eastern icons and other references. Floral subjects are nevertheless Latour’s main passion.

Latour started painting in her early twenties, encouraged greatly by her father, a painter and sculptor himself.

Early work was not dissimilar to that of her father but it was he who steered Mira’s style in a manner more suited to her talents.

Recently, her painting has become more contemplative whilst, at the same time, being very forthright and confident.

YUAN LEE Yuan Lee was born in Taiwan. His entrance into the world of art began at the age of four when his father mesmerised him with the beauty of Chinese calligraphy and painting. After attaining his Master of Arts in 1984, Lee developed tremendous capability, mastering different media including watercolour, oil and pastel. In 1987 he moved to New York, working initially as a studio manager but subsequently gaining his second Master of Fine Arts degree in 1994. In later years Lee designed over a hundred postage stamps for a number of countries and the United Nations.

PETER LIK Peter Lik is one of Australia’s most innovative and prolific landscape photographers. His passion and dedication to his craft are unsurpassed, and Peter is recognised as the leader in his field. He was born in Melbourne in 1959 the only son of Czech immigrant parents. Completely self taught, Peter’s talent for photography was evident from an early age. As a young boy of eight when he first picked up a camera, he has retained a spirit and enthusiasm for his work that is equalled only by his unbounded energy and deep affinity for the land. It was whilst travelling in Alaska in 1994 that Peter’s fascination with photography took a dramatic turn.

Previously only working with 35mm cameras, he discovered the encompassing view of the panoramic camera and he was converted. It opened up a whole new world of creative possibilities and took him to another level in his photographic projects.

STEVEN HANS LINDNER Lindner is a creative photo imager based in New York City. Born in Manhattan, his family moved to suburbia and went to school in Union, New Jersey. He is the first generation of

his family to be born in America. His family from Germany, after fleeing the Nazi’s was comprised of engineers, doctors, entrepreneurs and people in the fashion business. But the current theme with each and every one of his relatives, was they were artistic and maybe more tellingly, photographers, as hobbyists.

After many successful years doing creative photography for major fashion magazines, as well as advertising and corporate work, Lidner had failed to really find the creative outlet he was seeking. As he was about to depart on a three week self assignment, he revisited the photographs on his light box of Germany. Knowing what he saw and what his vision was, Steven Hans was totally frustrated by what he had captured his last time there. It was at this moment he had finally found his vision.

Creating unique, yet natural, moody and dynamic colour images of New York City, America and Europe, Steven Hans’s images are collected, reproduced and sold worldwide.

DION SALVADOR LLOYD Dion Salvador Lloyd is a self-taught artist and, coming from an artistic family, was surrounded by art from an early age, hence his middle name.

During what he describes as a fourteen year sabbatical Dion found himself sitting on a beach in Turkey contemplating. A few months earlier he had lost all he owned in a fire and was very disillusioned by his career in catering.

He sat looking out over the sea, with a burning homesickness inside; he felt he had nowhere to go and no home to return to. That day he made a promise to himself that when he found a home and place to settle, he would paint, feeling that there was something inside him that needed to be explored and expressed through that medium.

With his father, a sculptor, Dion was always interested in the process of creating art. Initially entering into painting as a hobby he hoped that one day he would become good enough to be shown alongside his father’s work at a regular pitch in Green Park, London.

When he finally realised this goal and set his work up alongside others he was overwhelmed when he sold his first painting on the first day. From there on Dion set up his own regular pitch and, after working in restaurants during the week, would travel there every weekend to exhibit and sell his work. This was no comfortable gallery environment where people would talk in hushed whispers, the work is shown on stands erected on the pavement and the audience is the general public walking by. After this his work evolved rapidly.

Peter Lik

Dion paints skyscapes which are, by turns, warm and engaging, mean and foreboding. They betray his admiration for the likes of Turner and Dali. He is inspired by almost everything around him; living by the sea, film, music, books, exhibitions – the list could go on forever, but if one were to put it in the most general terms Dion is inspired by life, nature and the human condition.

Specifically the artists he cites as inspirations are Tom Keating, Turner, Rothko and Rembrandt.

When you ask Lloyd what his intentions are with his work his answer is “I want to make work that people can fall into.”

He believes that his purpose in life is to leave something behind; something that is good and beautiful. He works in an innocent, untrained and blatantly honest way with his final works being refreshingly simple, straight forward and breathtakingly beautiful. His own celebration of the beauty around us serves to remind us all to look up and beyond ourselves.

Primarily all of Dion’s paintings are about space and openness, simplicity of shape, colour and form, his intentions to not so much depict a reality as a dream space for the imagination.

MAHAYANA Mahayana Buddhism is not a single group but a collection of Buddhist traditions: Zen Buddhism, Pure Land Buddhism, and Tibetan Buddhism are all forms of Mahayana Buddhism. It is strongest in Tibet, China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and Mongolia.

‘Mahayana’ is also the pseudonym of an American artist, well known in his field, who - like Banksy, the graffiti artist now having his work traded for large sums of money - chooses to remain enticingly anonymous. His choice of the word ‘Mahayana’ reflects his passionate interest in Buddhist traditions. His work, beautifully executed on special canvas, is produced at his own pace and can take several years to finalise or complete. Mahayana has been known to revise works many times before settling on the version anyone else is permitted to see.

STEVE McCURRY Steve McCurry has won many of photography’s top awards. Best known for his evocative colour photography, McCurry captures the essence of human struggle and joy in the finest documentary tradition. A member of Magnum Photos since 1986, McCurry has searched and found the unforgettable. Many of his breathtaking images have become modern day icons.

Born in Philadelphia, he graduated from the College of Arts and Architecture at the Pennsylvania State University. After working at a newspaper for two years, he left for India to freelance. It was in India that McCurry learned to watch and wait on life. If you wait, he realised, people will forget your camera and the soul will drift up into view.

His career was launched when, disguised in native garb, he crossed the Pakistan border into rebel-controlled Afghanistan just before the Russian invasion. When he emerged, he had rolls of film sewn into his clothes and images that would be published around the world as among the first to show the conflict there. His coverage won the Robert Capa Gold Medal for Best Photographic Reporting from Abroad, an award dedicated to photographers exhibiting exceptional courage and enterprise. He is the recipient of numerous awards.

McCurry has covered many areas of international and civil conflict, including the Iran-Iraq war, the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, Beirut, Cambodia, the Philippines, the Gulf War, and continuing coverage of Afghanistan. He focuses on the human consequences of war, not only showing what war impresses on the landscape, but rather on the human face, driven by an innate curiosity and sense of wonder about the world and everyone in it. He has the uncanny ability to cross boundaries of language and culture to capture stories of human experience.

MAKIKO

A high point in his career was the rediscovery of the previously unidentified Afghan refugee girl that many have described as the most recognisable photograph in the world today. When McCurry finally located Sharbat Gula after almost two decades, he said, “Her skin is weathered; there are wrinkles now, but she is as striking as she was all those years ago.”

Makiko is a Japanese illustrator, born in Nagoya in 1952 and now living in a small village in Belgium. She studied graphic design in the USA and went on to become a successful artist for greeting cards and children’s books in Europe and Japan.

McCurry returned from an extended assignment in China on September 10, 2001. His coverage at Ground Zero on September 11 is a testament to the heroism and nobility of the people of New York City. “You felt the horror and immediately, instinctively understood

Faces of Buddhas particularly are usually produced by the artist in rough sculptural form prior to being worked as two-dimensional pieces.

Steve McCurry

that our lives would never be the same again.”

OLIVIER MÉRIEL Olivier Meriel is passionate about Normandy, with its turbulent climate, its ancient towns and shing ports, and its farmland dotted with cows and sheep.

The son of a chemist, he lives and works in the small seaside town of Saint Aubin-sur-Mer, just as his ancestors did before him, making photographs that perfectly capture the feeling of history this region is steeped in. Meriel’s landscapes, while dark and moody, ultimately document his search for light. This light is reflected off the land and as surfaces act as mirrors, they exude a subtle glow that seeps into even the darkest corners. A human presence that is felt but not seen quietly leads us to explore and to contemplate the secrets of this magical place and the profound meaning of existence. Meriel’s work is held in the Maison Europenne de la Photographie and the Fonds National d’Art Contemporain in Paris, and in a number of other collections in France and the United States.

GED MITCHELL “Amazingly I find myself thinking about how I initially got interested in painting and how I became an artist. I say amazingly because it was never really meant to be – at least never in my wildest dreams! However, after taking the plunge in 1988 I have continued to make my living from my art, even though I didn’t get off to the best of starts by failing my 11 plus exam. So it seems that I am a product of my poor education and I have to say I wouldn’t have it any other way!”

On leaving school without qualifications of any kind, Mitchell took a job as a photographer’s assistant.

“It taught me much about composition and the use of light and colour to create a pleasing image invaluable in my work as a painter. My photographs are my sketchpad and are a constant source of reference.”

“My interest in art was rekindled in late 1979 when I was bought a small box of watercolours, and what started as a hobby then became my passion. My main outlets for my work were previously at local art centres and major craft fairs. I’ve also had a number of one man shows throughout the past 20 years. In 1992 I opened my own art gallery, but after six wonderful years I found that my painting time was becoming less and less. I was instead being taken up by the day to day running of the gallery. So in 1998 I decided to go back to painting full-time which was a big decision for me, having

grown accustomed to the steady income the gallery provided. However, painting is, and always will be, my passion and it wasn’t long before the commissions started rolling in again.”

“I believe that the fact that I had no formal training was actually an advantage. Being allowed to explore only areas that interested me, following my gut instinct and taking my inspiration from artists that I admired. The net result was that I was able to develop a style of my own which has evolved over the years, but still maintains the key features that make it distinctive.”

“My love affair with the Greek Islands continues and I visit regularly for major relaxation and battery recharge. It works wonders, although it is never long before I reach for my paints or my camera!”

JIM MITCHELL Born in Stoke on Trent, England, Mitchell’s passion, apart from painting, is aviation – his uncle helped design the Spitfire fighter plane!

“I like using a wide variety of media and trying to combine them in successful ways. It’s mastering a different style or technique which interests me most. I’m happiest with watercolour, gouache, and coloured pencil and pastel – all at the same time. But I also used to do a lot of limited edition prints and book illustrations in oil.”

Mitchell’s work has ranged from medals and coins to designs for images used on mugs, teapots, books and so on. He also painted the first flight of the Spitfire which was published as a limited edition print and sold well enough to fund a major proportion of building a full size replica of the plane for a major aviation museum.

BEN MOGADOR Mogador was born in France in 1967.

Multi-talented as a painter and percussionist, Mogador first left Paris for Essaouira, Morocco, now his temporary home, because he was fascinated with its active Gnawa music scene. North African themes and the subtle colour shades of the nearby deserts have since then been a major influence in his artistic pursuits.

CLAUDE MONET Born in 1840, Monet was a French artist, arguably today, along with Picasso and Van Gogh, the most famous of painters. It is fitting that one of his pictures, Impression: Sunrise, gave the Impressionist movement its name.

Monet excelled as a caricaturist in his youth but soon became a convert to landscape painting. Having experienced

Ged Mitchell

extreme poverty, he began to prosper and by the time he was 50 was successful enough to buy a house at Giverny, on the Seine. It is here that he created the celebrated water-garden which served as the theme for the series of paintings of waterlilies that began in 1899 and grew to dominate his work completely.

making photographs is a way to experience beauty instead of just looking at it,” Nagler says. He believes that photographers should communicate feelings that are inside them.

Through their photographs, a photographer should be saying: “This is what I saw and felt and I’d like to share that!”

In his final years he was troubled by failing eyesight but painted until the end, completing a great decorative scheme of water-lily paintings that he donated to the nation in the year of his death.

Monte’s photographs, which have won numerous awards, are found in many private and public collections. He is also a noted writer, lecturer and teacher of photography and has conducted many classes and seminars throughout the USA.

EDVARD MUNCH

NATARAJA

Edvard Munch was a Norwegian artist whose brooding and anguished paintings and graphic works, based on personal grief and obsessions, were instrumental in the development of expressionism.

The name Nataraja is used pseudonymously by an American artist, who also works under the moniker Mahayana (see separate entry).

Born in Norway in 1863, Munch began painting at the age of 17 in Christiania (now Oslo). A state grant, awarded in 1885, enabled him to study briefly in Paris. For 20 years thereafter Munch worked chiefly in Paris and Berlin. At first influenced by impressionism and postimpressionism, he then turned to a highly personal style and content, increasingly concerned with images of illness and death. In 1892, in Berlin, an exhibition of his paintings so shocked the authorities that the show was closed. Undeterred, Munch and his sympathisers worked throughout the 1890s toward the development of German expressionist art. Perhaps the best known of all Munch's work is The Scream. This, and the harrowing The Sick Child, reflect Munch’s childhood trauma, occasioned by the death of his mother and sister from tuberculosis.

Melancholy suffuses paintings such as The Bridge — in limp figures with featureless or hidden faces, over which loom the threatening shapes of heavy trees and brooding houses. Reflections of sexual anxieties are seen in his portrayals of women, alternately represented as frail, innocent sufferers or as lurid, life-devouring vampires.

In 1908 Munch's anxiety became acute and he was hospitalised. He returned to Norway in 1909 and died in Oslo on January 23, 1944.

Munch's considerable body of etchings, lithographs, and woodcuts is now considered a significant force in modern graphic art; the work is simple, direct, and vigorous in style, and powerful in subject matter.

One of the most enduring symbols of India is the figure Nataraja Shiva, the King of Dancers. Shiva’s cosmic dance is believed to encompass creation, preservation and destruction and this idea has been embedded in Hindu thought and ritual since the dawn of civilisation.

JULIA OGDEN “I have always had a keen interest in art, and after school went on to study for a BTEC National Diploma in art and design at Leeds College of Art and Design. I completed this course with distinction in 1996 and continued with my studies at Edinburgh College of Art. I gained a BA Hon’s in Visual Communication, specialising in illustration. I chose illustration because I was attracted to the combination of art and literature. I used themes from texts as a starting point and during that time I produced varied work from printmaking, bookbinding, animation and of course drawings and paintings.”

“When my course drew to a close I decided I was not ready for the real world and applied for an MA. In 2000 I started an MA course in sequential Illustration at Brighton University. The course appealed to me for many reasons; I was well suited to the sequential focus of it, my previous work being dominated by a series format, I also felt excited about developing my images further and with London a short train ride away I was hoping for commercial possibilities.”

MONTE NAGLER

“After I completed my MA I began pursuing these possibilities. I feel lucky to have lived in Brighton at this time in my career as there are lots of galleries, cafes and bars providing excellent opportunities to exhibit paintings.”

Monte Nagler began photographing seriously after studying with Ansel Adams. “It was during that period of intensive work that I realised that

“I started to become successful as a fine artist rather than an illustrator, which initially came as a surprise to me after all my studying, however I have

Monte Nagler

never felt that art needed to be categorised so strictly. The more paintings I did, the more confident I became with my own ideas and imagemaking. A few years on I have had many successful solo exhibitions and sell paintings consistently well. I have sold out at recent art fairs and am very pleased with the response.”

“When I began exhibiting, my paintings were Brighton influenced, generally being seascapes, but at the same time I was interested in colour and composition. As time went on my subject matter became more varied and my focus less about the subject matter and more about atmospheres and feelings.”

“I love to paint butterflies and flowers as there is something very satisfying about capturing ephemeral things. My aims are to produce pieces that evoke positive themes, whether it is a simple landscape that reminds the viewer of a place close to their heart or a bright canvas to escape grey days.”

“My chosen medium is acrylic, as I find it is best suited to my way of working, which is to paint layers and layers of colour. I blend different colours into the background of my paintings to evoke sections of light. I feel this creates a glow in the painting, and makes the work more interesting. When I have painted the basics on canvas, I detail using oil Pastel. I love this way of working for many reasons; separating shapes and colours reminds me of my screen painting days at college and also gives me a chance to draw delicate lines, which I feel lends sensitivity to the painting.”

“I feel I have just begun to explore the possibilities of texture, various colour combinations and different themes. I hope to build on my technical skills in the future.”

JAMIE OLIVER Oliver was born in rural Kent, southern England, in 1970 and began his working life aged eight as a bird-scarer on a local farm. This turned out to be good preparation for the later hardships of being an artist!

Oliver says: “I later studied painting in South Wales for three years and after completing my degree moved to London. As my creative work gradually evolved, subjects that interested me in life began to appear in my artwork. At about this time I started a five year period of learning circus trapeze but still found time for a full time job as an in-house illustrator at a large publishing house. Here I honed my digital art skills in a pressured, professional environment and this has given me a good understanding of the potential problems

and constraints that clients have to contend with when working on projects.”

“Most recently I have moved to the very edge of the south Kent coast where I am painting and drawing with great enthusiasm, often on location with just a pen and paper, and still looking for fresh ways to create exciting new imagery.”

SABINA PALMER Born in London in 1964, Palmer studied ceramics at art college in London in the early 1980s and pursued a successful career in kitchenware for a major manufacturer. Her work has always, uniquely, used a specific colour palette, virtually limited to browns, blues, off-whites and near blacks. A move from three-dimensional to two took place in 2001, after Palmer spent several months in intensive care following a serious car accident in which her daughter was also badly injured. As part of the recuperation process, Palmer turned to painting.

Happily, after making a full recovery, Palmer’s work received considerable acclaim and her stunning canvases continue to realise ever higher prices.

Nevertheless, despite her traumatic experiences, her limited colour palette has remained the same.

JO PARRY Jo Parry was born on the south coast of England in the early 1970s and spent her childhood in and around Dorset and the New Forest. At the age of 12, Parry also achieved the holy grail of all artistically-minded British children of her generation, when one of her paintings was finally included in the “Gallery” section of a well known art show on children’s television! She was also inspired towards her artistic career by the headmistress of the grammar school she attended who, furious that she had decided to go to art college rather than study English at university, told her that she was a ‘drop-out’ and that she would never make a career of art!

Jo subsequently completed five years at art college and is now a professional illustrator and artist. She describes her artwork as “fun, bold, colour-inspired and unpretentious” and usually works in soft pastels. Her hobbies outside the artistic field include photography, travel, sport and cooking.

BILL PHILIP Born in 1946 in Forfar, Scotland, Bill Philip trained as a professional photographer in London. For a number of years he was Director of Arts at City of Westminster College. He now lives and works in Sussex concentrating on his lifelong passion for landscape and fine

Julia Ogden

art photography. He has had his work widely published and exhibits regularly.

TASMIN PHOENIX Tasmin Phoenix was born in1969 in Cheltenham, England. She spent her formative years living in various countries around the world, her father being an army captain. Moving between countries became something of a way of life and, after she successfully completed a three year art college course in London studying fine art and sculpture, she moved to Tasmania for eighteen months with her boyfriend at the time. It was there that she acquired the name Tasmin.

Now married with children and living much of the year in southern Spain, Phoenix is a keen horticulturalist. In recent years she has developed her own mixed media techniques, blending photography and painting with subtle electronic manipulation.

FUNG PING Fung Ping was born in Xi’an, China in 1965. In his late teens Ping realised that he had artistic abilities and developed a fascination for calligraphy and the related tools required to produce the fast, but precise brush strokes for the medium. His parents ran a market stall on the outskirts of the city selling a pot-pourri of small items for the home. Ping’s father suggested they try putting some of his son’s work on the stall. Much to everyone’s delight, the young man’s calligraphy sold well and began to take up more and more space on the martket table. By his mid twenties, Ping had started to incorporate his calligraphic style into illustrations and more graphic pieces; bamboo leaves and other distinctly Chinese icons featured heavily in the work.

Today, Ping’s work is concerned with graphic form in relation to colour. He often produces several very similar pieces in different colourways to dynamic effect.

LAURENT PINSARD Born in 1944, Laurent Pinsard attended the school of photography in Vevey, in Switzerland, and became interested in several artistic expressions, such as drawing, engraving, sculpture, architecture and photography.

Aside from Europe, his assignments have led him to the Middle East, to Northern Africa, notably Morocco where his first trip took him in 1986.

A pioneer in digital photography since 1995, he has published articles on this technique in many well-known specialised magazines.

Nature, and more particularly, the elements that are part of it, have always been of interest to him. Of these

elements, he interprets the graphic writing flowing from them, the architecture and the sculptures that are formed. This is the way he loves to photograph matter: water, sand, wood, plant life, insects… By his technical mastery and his art of composition, the nervures of a leaf become ramifications, the feather of a quill, lace, and a cluster of pebbles, real cairns.

POLINA PLOTNIKOVA Polina Plotnikova was born in Moscow. She studied History of Art in the State University in Moscow, and later completed a course of Modern Art studies in the Christies Education College in London.

Photography is one of Polina’s passions. As head of the Exhibitions Department in the Moscow House of Photography, she came across many photographic masterpieces, and worked closely with many prominent photographers.

Polina is a keen observer of natural beauty; another of her passions is growing flowers. She has a collection of orchids and hippeastrums, and is always on the lookout for new species.

This combination of interests naturally led Polina to flower photography.

DANIEL POLLERA Rambling coastlines, sun washed decks and romantically shaded porticos come to life under the brush of Daniel Pollera.

Inspired by such artists as Edward Hopper, Winslow Homer and Andrew Wyeth, Daniel’s paintings express a mood of tranquility and peaceful solitude evoking a sense that ‘all’s right in the world’.

Using acrylics, working in a warm palette on board and drawing from life experience, he lures the viewer in with his crisp photographic quality and magical realism.

Daniel was born and raised on Long Island, New York and lives on the water in one of its coastal towns. Much of his imagery comes from these surroundings and that’s helped to make him one of the most respected and successful painters of coastal landscapes.

Dan has been interviewed on several television programmes and in the press.

His art has been selected for many magazine covers. For years his original art works and reproductions have been sought after to grace the walls of executive boardrooms, the living rooms of several celebrities and the many homes of lovers of coastal and nautical landscapes.

Laurent Pinsard

NICOLA RABBETT Rabbett was born in 1973 in Devon, England and has been practising as a decorative artist & designer since 1994 when she achieved a degree in printed textiles from Winchester School of Art. Studying there has greatly influenced the way in which Nicola works today.

Among many other things, she has learnt to incorporate many different styles and mediums within her designs, enabling her to create an interesting and varied portfolio of work. Nicola often likes to work in mixed media, incorporating many different textured surfaces and combining them with the hand drawn or painted image. The experimentation of new mediums, paint effects and different techniques is of the utmost importance in her work, to ensure the creation of new and exciting designs, which have an element of surprise.

Embroidery also features in her work, sometimes on paper, but primarily in the embroidered & beaded cushions she produces, creating texture and dimension, with metallic thread adding richness and reflected light.

Travel experiences have also influenced her work; the many photographs, postcards and sketches Nicola has collected, have acted as a journal of the places to which she has travelled.

In addition to her design work, she has undertaken a number of commissions for craft work. These range from silkscreen printed wall hangings and embroidered cushions to paintings and hand crafted clocks.

ODILON REDON Odilon Redon was born in 1840 and educated in Bordeaux, France. He went to Paris at the age of 30, where he worked for the next 20 years producing black and white drawings and lithographs. In these works, Redon developed a highly distinctive repertoire of strange subjects that included amoeba-like creatures, and insects and plants with human heads.

During the 1890’s, Redon turned to painting, revealing a remarkable talent as a colourist. In oil and pastel, Redon used radiant colour in paintings of mythological subjects and flowers.

Historically, Redon is considered to be an important Symbolist artist as well as a precursor to Surrealism.

He died in 1916 at the age of 76.

BERENICE RICCA Ricca was born in Piombino, Italy in 1961.

The beauty of the Tuscan countryside with which she was surrounded inspired the young Berenice to draw and paint a landscape dominated by small villas

and cypress trees. Much of her work was completed on the small island of Elba, remembered mostly in history for being where Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled for nine months of his life in 1814.

Although Ricca has travelled through many countries in the world, her work has always been dominated by Tuscan imagery. Most pieces painted in oils are based initially on pencil sketches. She has recently started experimenting with collage.

ROBIN Robin, his full name mysteriously known only to a select few, was born in Berlin, Germany in 1941.

His artistic career has spanned various styles and most media. Although today working digitally, Robin spent much of the 1960s and 70s involved in finely airbrushed advertising art, often relating to beauty and perfume products. By the 80s he had acquired a considerable reputation, particularly as a poster artist, producing iconic imagery of beautiful women.

The Aquarian traits of ageless wit, gracious spirit, stylish appearance and multifarious talents have made Robin a unique, gregarious and charming individual, immediately liked wherever he goes. Robin has always had wanderlust and rarely spends the whole year in his native Germany without venturing further afield – Bali, Goa, Belize, Cuba are favourite haunts – but the world is Robin’s oyster!

ROGER-VIOLLET Henri Roger was a French photographer.

On October 13, 1889, at noon he took his first photograph - a simple image of his family assembled together for their Sunday meal. Eventually his work, along with his contemporaries, helped to form the Roger-Viollet collection, amassing over the years an historical mosaic covering life and society.

BILL ROMERO It will come as no surprise to any observer of Romero’s work to learn that he is a man passionately excited by competitive sports, playing card and board games. Over a number of years, mostly for his own amusement and satisfaction, Romero has depicted the minutae of detail in everything from chess to cricket and baseball to backgammon. He was born on the outskirts of Las Vegas in 1946 and has stayed close to his Nevada roots ever since other than serving time in the army in the 1960s.

TREVOR SCOBIE The circle and the sphere have been enduring motifs in Trevor’s work for many years. They are symbolic of the

Trevor Scobie

atom in quantum physics - the blueprint for all living things and in human affairs they are representive of peace and purity.

After studying graphic design at college Trevor began his professional career in London, working in publishing (including cover images for the James Bond series of spy novels and Ray Bradbury’s science fiction titles) while continuing to develop his traditional skills as a painter. Later, excited by the possibilities of emerging digital technology, he diversified into 3D digital art and design, developing a highly distinctive personal response to the medium and also completing a number of corporate commissions.

His latest series of contemporary abstracts have already formed the basis of a highly successful solo exhibition and have also featured at sponsored promotional events.

Trevor Scobie lives and works in Sussex, England.

JEANENE SCOTT Jeanene Scott Photography was established in 1995. She works extensively with clients accommodating their needs through studio and location photography to create original work for catalogess, brochures, ads and the web.

Jeanene holds a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art. Recently she has produced images for greeting cards and has built a strong collection of fine art, still life and lifestyle images.

Scott continues to create evocative office art work, product and portrait photography for corporate clients.

Photography is Jeanene’s passion.

Light, whether natural or created in her studio is her favourite tool. Natural light has enabled Jeanene to create, what has become, a much sought after flower series. Scott utilises the depth and control of studio lighting expertly to give a product shape and definition.

MARK SEGAL Since 1981 Mark Segal has established an international reputation as an acclaimed photographer. A native of Washington DC, Mark has been living and working as a professional photographer in Chicago, Illinois.

experimental ideas and his ability to interpret concepts into strong photography.

After founding Mark Segal Photography, Mark and his brother Doug Segal began the Panoramic Images company in 1988. It has grown to become the largest stock library of large format images in the world. Mark also started a separate company in 1989 in order to create 360-degree panoramic photographs from full size helicopters. With the need to produce images at low-level heights, he began exploring the adaptation of still and HD/video cameras to radio control helicopters.

SETSINALA Setsinala is one of many artists and craftspeople on the African continent and elsewhere to practice the art of batik. Born in Lagos, Nigeria in the early 1970s, Setsinala sells her work locally and through several contacts in South Africa.

Batik has been both an art and a craft for centuries. Contemporary batik, while owing much to the past, is markedly different from the more traditional and formal styles. For example, the artist may use etching, discharge dyeing, stencils, different tools for waxing and dyeing, wax recipes with different resist values and work with silk, cotton, wool, leather, paper or even wood and ceramics.

Melted wax is applied to cloth before being dipped in dye. It is common for people to use a mixture of bees wax and paraffin wax. The bee’s wax will hold to the fabric and the paraffin wax will allow cracking, which is a characteristic of batik. Wherever the wax has seeped through the fabric, the dye will not penetrate. Sometimes several colours are used, with a series of dyeing, drying and waxing steps.

Thin wax lines are made with a canting needle, a wooden handled tool with a tiny metal cup with a tiny spout, out of which the wax seeps. Other methods of applying the wax onto the fabric include pouring the liquid wax, painting the wax on with a brush, and applying the hot wax to precarved wooden or metal wire block and stamping the fabric.

After the last dyeing, the fabric is hung up to dry. Then it is dipped in a solvent to dissolve the wax, or ironed between paper towels or newspapers to absorb the wax and reveal the deep rich colours and the fine crinkle lines that give batik its character.

As a graduate from Carnegie-Mellon University with a degree in Civil Engineering, Mark returned to his passion for photography after four years as a project manager for the Washington DC Metro System.

CAROL SHARP

Since that time Mark has literally travelled the world working closely with art directors and designers in 40 countries. Demand for his work arises from Mark’s constant pursuit of fresh,

Carol is one of the worlds leading still life photographers specialising in flowers and plants. She has a vast botanical knowledge and a talent for sourcing traditional and unusual flowers

Carol Sharp

and herbs, both in season from her own large garden and out of season. This ensures the creation of exceptional images of natural subjects in their prime throughout the year.

SAM SHAW Sam Shaw, born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and a life-long New Yorker, began his career doing photographs for Collier’s Magazine in the 1940s but soon found that his interest lay more in documentary work than the staged studio shots he was asked to do.

This desire to capture real life and real people came through in the pictures he made of New Orleans jazz musicians, sharecroppers and coal miners. By 1951 he had started working in the film industry as a special photographer and his work on The Seven Year Itch created the iconic image of Marilyn over the subway grate. He met and began working with her early in her career and continued to shoot her through most of her professional life.

Although he photographed practically every star in films of the period, he had a special way of capturing the spirit of his female subjects. He often liked to work without poses, make-up or glitz and encouraged them to have fun and improvise. In the 1960s he evolved into a feature film producer starting with the Paul Newman film Paris Blues.

Even as a producer his first love was always photography. He remained the special photographer on the set and helped create the publicity campaign for all of his films. Sam Shaw also worked closely with John Cassevettes producing a series of films where the actors created their characters on screen through improvisation. Not only did Sam Shaw create some of classic Hollywood’s most celebrated images, but he was also a pioneer to a new artistic style and technique that paved the way for independent film making.

HENRI SILBERMAN Silberman was born in Paris, grew up in Brooklyn and has been photographing cities and nature since he was in high school.

“I bought my first camera when I was 16. It was a Mamiya Sekor 1000 TL 35 mm. I paid $225 for it and didn’t have the change to get home on the subway.

I haven’t stopped shooting since. Now, I work in medium and large format.”

Cities with all their contradictions have been a stimulus for Silberman’s visual representation of the urban landscape.

“Wherever I am, it’s the crowd, a gesture, the pace, the culture and the architecture. What keeps me going as a photographer? I work every day; shooting, editing and re-shooting; learning as I go; ideally creating photos

that surprise me, that have an emotional resonance.”

Silberman’s photographs have been exhibited and published internationally.

His work is represented in many corporate collections and has been used in movies and television productions.

LARRY SILVER Silver is an American photographer, born in 1934 in the Bronx and living in New York, who has had work published in Life amongst many other magazines and has exhibited widely in various photographic museums and galleries.

By 1960 Silver had opened a commercial photography studio in New York, specialising in illustrative and stilllife genres. In more recent years, he has travelled extensively through China, photographing the unique beauty of the country and its people.

HUGH SITTON Born and raised in Somerset, Hugh studied at Plymouth College of Art and Design, then began work as a second photographer in an advertising studio in Bristol. He was inspired by the way the photographers built images from scratch, and sought to combine this attention to composition with his love of travel photography. By focusing on stock photography over commissioned work, Hugh has enjoyed the freedom to explore the world while developing his individual style. His images span both the ancient and modern, and he has a particular interest in people photography.

Says Hugh, “I may be a bit nomadic and a romantic at heart. I have a pre-occupation with the passage of time, and it’s the romanticism of the history of each country that inspires me. I try to visualise the pictures I take before I actually take them, I have preconceived ideas of things I haven’t seen before, and I use that to build the picture I will eventually take. Though there will inevitably be alterations to the final shot, these tend to be minor, as the composition of the image in terms of colour, shape and design dictate the final result.”

Hugh’s career has spanned two decades and his work is sought after for both advertising and editorial use. His images can be seen in travel and leisure publications worldwide.

TIM SMITH Smith is an English photographer, born in 1962, living in Nottingham, England.

As a biology teacher, he has specialised over recent years in photographing plants, flowers and other natural objects.

Henri Silberman

MARK SPAIN

GEORGE STEINMETZ

“I have always been interested in art right from an early age. After having attended art college, I decided I favoured printmaking and opened up a print making studio in Kent (England) where I spent many years developing my etching and collagraph techniques.”

Best known for his exploration and science photography, George Steinmetz sets out to reveal the few remaining secrets in our world today: remote deserts, obscure cultures, new developments in science and technology.

“My art began with a love of landscape images and I had many etching editions published. These were successful and spanned many years. However, as time went on I felt the need to develop other forms of imagery from abstract to figurative. I am constantly experimenting with different subjects and techniques, which I then apply to a variety of images. Although this is new to me, I have thoroughly enjoyed and embraced the new challenge.”

“My ideas can come from many sources, but are more often than not prompted by music. The majority of ideas develop when I’m working on another painting or in the evening when I’m relaxing. When this happens I do a small thumbnail size sketch so that I don’t forget it. Then at a later date I work the sketches up, until I can visualise it as a painting, with the use of models and props.”

“I believe that the mood and feeling within the painting are as important as the composition. This is an area that I enjoy exploring - it’s such an exciting challenge to try and capture a moment.

Once I have a clear idea of an image, I will often develop a colour rough to try to help create the right feeling.”

“If I am working in oils, I will paint a basic background colour that is predominant within the image and then begin to work forward. Once the basic picture is painted, I will continue to work the colours of the subject and background until I’m happy with the general mood and feeling within the image.”

“I always like to create a little energy with the brush strokes, to help give the finished painting some life. Once finished I often place the picture out of sight for a few days and then re-visit it later with fresh eyes to see how I feel about it, and whether I can improve it in any way.”

“When painting abstracts, my approach is somewhat more spontaneous. I don’t usually have any preconceived ideas, and I just allow the image to happen.

Colour choice depends on my mood and I usually work on several images at once. I will continue to work on them over a period of several months, sometimes painting major changes to the image many times, until I’m satisfied with the end result.”

A regular contributor to National Geographic Magazine, he has examined subjects ranging from global oil exploration and the latest advances in robotics to the inner-most stretches of the Sahara Desert and the little-known treehouse people of Irian Jaya.

Born In Beverly Hills, California, in 1957, George graduated from Stanford University with a degree in Geophysics.

He began his career in photography by hitchhiking through Africa for 18 months. His latest passion is photographing the world’s deserts while piloting a motorised paraglider. This experimental aircraft provides him with a unique physical perspective over remote places that are inaccessible by conventional aircraft. George now lives in Glen Ridge, New Jersey.

Steinmetz has won numerous awards for photography during his career, including two first prizes in science and technology in 1995 and 1998 from World Press Photo. He has also won awards and citations from Pictures of the Year, Overseas Press Club and Life Magazine’s Alfred Eisenstaedt Awards.

DEBRA STROUD “Artistically, my background has been geared more towards photography.

Painting has been a natural evolution for me and I find I am able to express different qualities. My entire family are creative and artistic, so I have had a firm foundation. I was born in Guildford, in the south of England, and have travelled far and wide, having a variety of really diverse jobs. I have worked as a freelance photographer, as a courier in New York, an executive in sales and marketing, and in noise pollution for a local council. I now live in Hampshire, not far from the sea and the South Downs.”

“From my earliest childhood, the sea with its continually changing moods, has always been the greatest source of inspiration for me. There is a great sense of calm and tranquillity. The sound of the waves crashing, that distinctive smell and the wind on your face - in fact the whole three-dimensional experience. I can never tire of it and it still evokes the same excitement now as it did when I was a child, running over the pebbles and sharp shells to be first to get to the sea. It is so evocative that it drives me to try to re-create it in my paintings. There is a wonderful luminosity and reflective light

George Steinmetz

quality that surrounds the coast.

Everywhere else is very flat by comparison. This light quality creates ideas and inspires me. But, although I draw most of my inspiration from the coasts around the South West, I have been very much inspired by places further afield such as the Seychelles, California and South Africa.

I like to walk over the great rolling hills of the South Downs in Sussex and Hampshire. From Butser Hill and The Trundle the sun beams down in shafts onto the sea in the distance. I try to recreate the brilliant blues that are almost tangible. Much of the way I interpret colour comes from my photographs, with the strong chromatic colours you get from transparencies. I like to paint in peace and to focus, and for that I need quietness. I work in both watercolour and oil- each is very different and which medium I use depends on my mood, but it is the sea which draws me back each time.

CANDICE TAIT Born and raised in South Africa, Tait’s rich colour palette and energetic brush strokes echo the surroundings that influenced her. In1998 she began taking photos of South African rivers and sunsets, which she subsequently recreated in oils. Before moving to London in 2002, Candice regularly exhibited in South Africa. Here her work became much sought after, resulting in commissions from the public and the National School of Arts and generating critical acclaim. She graduated from the world famous Central St Martins school for Art and Design, London, in 2006.

SHINGAI TANAKA Born in 1949, Tanaka, a Japanese calligrapher from Kyoto, has had many exhibitions throughout Europe after becoming an independent calligrapher in 1990. He teaches the art of oriental calligraphy to westerners, and has been holding annual calligraphy exhibitions for a number of years in various European cities.

THERAVADA Theravada, the ‘Doctrine of the Elders,’ is the school of Buddhism that draws its scriptural inspiration from the , or Pali canon, which scholars generally agree contains the earliest surviving record of the Buddha’s teachings.For many centuries, Theravada has been the predominant religion of continental Southeast Asia (Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos) and Sri Lanka.

Today Theravada Buddhists number well over 100 million worldwide. In recent decades Theravada has begun to

take root in the West.

The name is used pseudonymously by a young sculptor from Asia. His work is often virtually colourless whilst, at the same time, making maximum use of light and shade, dramatising the subtle curves and shapes of the spiritual face to great effect. Theravada prefers to remain anonymous saying simply that his work should stand alone and that he, the artist, is of no interest or significance; he is merely the maker.

SAMUEL GUILLERMO TORANZO Painter and sculptor, Samuel Toranzo was born in 1955 in Cuba. He studied his dual crafts at Las Tunas art school whilst nearly 30. Two years later Toranzo had his first major exhibition, ‘Lo ideal y lo cotidiano’.

In 1993 he moved to Havana and gained international recognition through Expo-Cuba, a cultural exposition, in the capital city.

In 1996 Toranzo received honours for his contribution to Cuban art as one of the country’s leading artists. Returning to Las Tunas in 1998, Samuel Toranzo took up a professorship at the Escuela Superior Pedagogica de Artes Plasticas.

His work is exhibited in the gallery of Havana Cathedral and can be found in several private collections around the world.

VINCENT VAN GOGH Born in 1853, a Dutch painter and draughtsman, with Cézanne and Gauguin, the greatest of PostImpressionist artists, Van Gogh trained for the ministry – his father having been a Protestant pastor – but after eventually becoming a lay preacher among impoverished miners in Belgium he was dismissed for giving away his belongings to the poor.

Finally discovering that art was his true vocation, Van Gogh’s output during the last ten years of his life, despite poverty and under-nourishment, was prodigious.

In 1888 he settled in Arles, where he painted over 200 canvases in 15 months. During this time he sold no pictures and suffered recurrent hallucinations and depression. He decided to found an artists’ co-operative with Gauguin but, as the result of a quarrel between them, he cut off a piece of his left ear, an event commemorated in one of his self-portraits. During the last 70 days of his life he painted an equal number of canvases.

Eventually, his spiritual anguish and depression became more acute and on 29 July 1890 he died from the results of a self-inflicted bullet wound. Van

Candice Tait

Gogh sold only one painting during his lifetime, and was little known at the time of his death, but his fame has grown ever since. In the history of painting, Van Gogh occupies a position of the first importance in the movement from the optical realism of the Impressionists to the abstract use of colour and form for symbolic and expressive values.

freelance illustrator and clients included major advertising companies and the New Zealand departments of health and education. In 1990 Scott moved to the UK.

RAVI VARGHESE

But in his fine art pieces, Scott draws inspiration from the beauty of the natural world. These magnified images expand the minute world of petals, stamen and even pollen into grand dramas, and we see the flower perhaps as a butterfly would, approaching on the wing.

Born in Mumbai, India in 1975, Varghese moved to Vancouver, Canada at the age of three and then to Calgary seven years later. But, never truly content with their new life, his parents missed their native country and returned when Ravi was 18.

Inspired and excited by learning about his origins, he was fascinated by the sights and sounds of such a contrasting culture to the continent he had been brought up in. Varghese spent three years travelling extensively in India and started to paint whilst on this long road of discovery. He took many thousands of photographs whilst travelling and often refers to them as sources for his work.

CHARLIE WAITE Charlie Waite is firmly established as one of the world’s most celebrated landscape photographers. He has published 28 books on photography and has held over 30 solo exhibitions across Europe, the USA, Japan and Australia, including three very successful exhibitions in the gallery at the OXO Tower, London, each visited by over twelve thousand people.

His company runs photographic tours, courses and workshops worldwide that are dedicated to inspiring photographers and improving their work. This is achieved with the help of a select team of specialist photographic leaders, all at the very top in their field.

He is the man behind the ‘Landscape Photographer of the Year’ Award and this ties in perfectly with his desire to share his passion and appreciation of the beauty of our world.

In his commissioned illustration, Scott cites as influences artists as diverse as Eric Gill, Munch and American comic artists.

Charlie Waite

Scott’s fine eye for detail is married to his virtuoso skill, taking his representations beyond the photoreal and mimicking Mother Nature’s own creative ability.

JOHN WILLIAM WATERHOUSE Waterhouse was an English painter, born in 1849 in Rome, where his father was working as an artist.

His early style was based on classical inspiration, heavily influenced by contemporaries like Alma-Tadema. He also had a preference for warm exotic scenes which made use of his Mediterranean experiences. During the 1880s he developed the dreamy Romanticism for which he is best known. He specialised in images from literature such as The Lady of Shallot and mythology.

In his later career he increasingly portrayed landscape-based subjects and nudes, but avoided any moves away from his basic formula.

RON WATTS Based in Canada, Ron Watts has been a professional photographer for nearly two decades. He has worked on assignment in Africa, South East Asia, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, South America, the Caribbean and across much of North America.

Waite says, “A landscape image cuts across all political and national boundaries, it transcends the constraints of language and culture.”

His photographs have contributed to and graced the covers of many of Canada’s top magazines.

SCOTT WALKER

Weinstein’s photographic career began as a passionate hobby in his early teens. Subsequently, after three years of full-time study, graduating with distinction, and a four year apprenticeship he rapidly became a successful commercial photographer. After some years working in South Africa, Weinstein emigrated to Australia. His company was formed in 1995 and has explored many areas of photography from photo-

Scott Walker was born in 1967 in Wellington, New Zealand. Art seems to have been in his blood, as his father is also an artist, so perhaps it was inevitable that, despite having no formal artistic training, Scott began his career at a graphics company rising quickly to the position of art director.

In 1987 Scott decided to become a

RICHARD WEINSTEIN

journalism and landscapes to portraiture and fashion. Three decades on and having made a successful career out of that hobby he feels a very fortunate man.

Weinstein currently resides in Sydney, Australia.

LORRAINE WESTWOOD Born in 1965 in Wolverhampton, central England, Westwood was often found drawing and painting as a young child.

After paying her way through art college by pavement drawing she began illustrating for design and advertising agencies. A few years later Lorraine opened a photographic studio with her husband.

She has worked in a variety of media as an illustrator – watercolour, acrylic, ink, pastel, crayon, but didn't start working in oils until 2004 when she decided to concentrate on fine art.

Westwood continues, “After moving permanently to France, I’m now inspired by all things French. I work mainly in oils as I enjoy the richness of the colours. I apply the paint quite thickly with definite brush marks. My favourite piece of work is whatever I am working on at present.”

PETER WILEMAN Peter was born in 1946 in Middlesex, England. On leaving school he went straight into his first job as a studio junior for a card company where his innate artistic talent was recognised.

There he spent five years studying lettering and design – his first artistic training – which gave him a solid grounding in colour awareness and formal structure.

Wileman then moved on to become art editor on a number of magazines, until finally he tired of the rat-race and set

himself up as a freelance illustrator. His years of experience stood him in good stead, covering as they did, all aspects of design and illustration.

Working freelance gave Peter the opportunity to concentrate on his painting, and he has produced a substantial body of highly expressive work inspired

by Britain’s coves and harbours. His large-scale compositions have a painterly quality derived from the apparent vigour of the brushstrokes and the impression of spontaneous creativity, which make them both dramatic and uplifting.

CHENG YAN A Chinese painter and calligrapher, Yan came to Europe in the 1990s and now runs his own gallery in Cardiff, Wales.

He began painting under a Chinese master at the age of five. His work is in many private and national collections, including the National Gallery of China.

WEI YING-WU Wei was born in 1977 in Hong Kong. He started to paint in his late teens whilst studying theology at university. His interest in Buddhist philosophy developed during this period and the subject matter for his work increasingly came to be almost exclusively dominated by imagery relating to this interest.

Wei left Hong Kong in 2000 and after a year travelling round mainland China with a companion, moved to San Francisco where he lives today. In 2002 he married a sculptress. His wife shares Ying-Wu’s interests and beliefs and they rapidly began to work on creative projects together, the recent piece ‘Meditation’ being a fine example of their collaboration.

©2008 Wizard & Genius-Idealdecor AG. Biographies Version 1.4 08.2008

Peter Wileman