PAINTING Q - Z

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I studied Graphic Design and Illustration at Bath Spa UC, specialising in illustration. However, the last few years have seen a shift of focus from illustration to painting.

My painting is an attempt to explain the emotional connection to the landscape that surrounds us on the Wiltshire/Dorset border. I regularly visit the Dorset coast for inspiration, but most of my work is centred around the Downs surrounding our home town of Mere, Wiltshire.

My work is a combination of sketches and painting outside, photos, gut feeling and emotional state at the time. I am not trying to represent a landscape figuratively, although the starting point is always from my sketchbook and memory of a place. I am moreover trying to connect with how I felt at the time of sketching. The light, the weather and who is with me (often my daughter Evie who likes to sketch with me). What results is an intuitive response to those factors.

The Kindertransport was a unique humanitarian programme, which ran between November 1938 and September 1939.  Approximately 10,000 children, the majority of whom were Jewish, were sent from their homes and families in Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia to Great Britain.  My father was one of those 10,000 children and my work explores this. I use photographs as a starting point, although materials often inspire my ideas and determine the final works. Abstracted layers directly echo the lack of detailed documentary evidence. The photog​raphic image has always been central to informing my work. I use a combination of images from the time just prior to the start of WWII and contemporary photography. My work began as a response to the handful of surviving photos of my Jewish paternal ancestors and previously withheld wartime documentation of their Viennese existence. My works journey through my ancestry.

John was born in Nottinghamshire, studying painting and graphic design at Nottingham College of Art in the 1960’s. 

He now lives in rural Warwickshire, just about as far from the sea as you can get. This doesn’t stop him from making frequent trips to the sea. In his paintings he likes his ships and boats to move and this effects how he gathers his reference material. His primary source being an extensive library of his own photographic images. This is added to whenever possible, often with no time for a sketch, but always with time for the camera to record. 

He has continued to be inspired over the last fifteen years by sail, ships and the sea. The breadth of his maritime imagery and experience is continually expanding, always believing that his next marine painting might be his best.

Inspired by water in all its forms, Anna uses sketches and photographs to create her final pieces. Her latest work focuses mainly on swimming pool water. These paintings are trying to capture the feeling of the cool, clear, turquoise water she remembers swimming in as a child, her sister by her side. The idea of capturing the fragments of dancing light, the changing ripples, the constantly moving waves, froth and foam in a still medium, really appeals to her.

"My paintings are a way of holding onto those beautiful and exhilarating moments – the first dip of a toe, the shock of cold that takes your breath away, the bubbles that tingle up your nose, the feeling of freedom and escapism that plunging into unbroken water can bring – the moments that make you feel so alive!"

Moish Sokal was born during the Israeli War of Independence to artistic parents who encouraged his talents. He grew up in a beachside town of the port city of Haifa.

At 20 he left his family to settle in Sydney, Australia when he married his first wife.

He studied Graphic Art and Design at Sydney Technical College and worked as a Graphic Designer and Illustrator for the next 20 years. However, he frequently left the commercial world to travel and paint, mainly in third-world countries, but also visiting Israel and England with his Somerset-born second wife.

My paintings are the direct result of my observations and experiences on actual locations. All of my paintings begin en plein air with drawings, water colours or acrylic sketches. The larger works are then completed in my studio either in acrylics or oils. I paint on paper, board, and canvas.My goal in painting is to show the world in a new and personal way. It often involves simplifying the scene to try to capture its essence and inner spirit as I see it. I am particularly interested in the effects of light, shadow and movement. The paintings often incorporate the use of rough textures as the picture may warrant.

Jo Thorne is a British painter specialising in contemporary expressionist painting. She graduated with a degree in Fine Art from the University of Hertfordshire (St. Albans School of Art) in 1998 and works from her studio at her home in Bristol.

Strongly influenced by early 20th-century expressionism, Jo describes her paintings as visual narratives that explore human connection through abstract painting and experimentation.

"What are the things in our collective unconscious that can trigger an emotional response? I use colour and expressive mark-making to spark a connection with the viewer. I aim to communicate a commonly experienced feeling or convey our emotional bond with nature and the built environment. 

I sometimes start with a more representational idea, but I paint spontaneously and meditatively, often to music; embracing unconscious mark-making and heightening colour as I go. I allow the painting to take its own course and want the end piece to leave the viewer with a sense of mood, space, time, or place.

Jonathan studied Art at Southend School of Art and Leeds University/Huddersfield Polytechnic. He taught art for many years whilst exhibiting at a wide number of galleries before becoming a full-time painter. Over the years he has established a reputation for paintings of atmospheric landscapes.

He works from his studio near the Thames estuary often beginning the work out on location. The environments of estuaries, rivers and the low-lying wetlands of Britain and the landscape of France are his constant sources of inspiration. He spends time every summer painting in South West France. He has developed a deep awareness and intense relationship to these types of landscapes. His work is often about places that he has explored over a long period of time. Some of these places are related to childhood memories and therefore are imbued with a deep sense of time and memory resulting in paintings that are rich in personal responses.

Born and bred in London I went on to study  Fine Art at Wimbledon School of Art and Norwich School of Art, gaining a BA Hons in Fine Art Printmaking.From my studio in Blagdon, North Somerset, I now work  primarily with oils - exploring the physical elements of the landscape, such as fleeting light, passing storms, big skies and water, seeking to intertwine the emotional and ethereal aspects of that landscape, whilst also exploring the empathy and fragility of humankind through artistic expression.

Born in London during WWII. Growing up in this turbulent time made an indelible mark on Barbara and would be reflected in her future artwork. An arts scholarship allowed her to pursue a degree in Fashion at Cheltenham College of Art. While at college, she won design awards and studied under the leading artists of the day. She immigrated to America and in the 1970’s and 80’s, she created vibrant 3-dimensional fabric wall hangings. For the past 30 years, she has honed her technique creating dynamic monotype prints, paintings and assemblages. Over the years, she has had several one-woman shows in Florida, England, New Jersey and New York. Her work has been collected and placed in homes and businesses everywhere from Sag Harbor, Montreal, Calgary, New York to Milan and Hong Kong. In December 2015, she had a retrospective exhibition at the Southwest Florida Foundation.