The school won the competition for making the most profit and appeared on BBC Breakfast and Radio 5 live on Friday 28th February. Read/listen/watch the coverage here.
The exhibits included diverse representations and interpretations of the landscape.
Sea Scene
This ceramic canvas depicts the full force of a powerful sea against the backdrop of a threatening leaden sky, the savage surf cooking up a melange of sand and spray to hurl towards the shore.
The artist, Annie Midwood, is inspired by sights and sounds of the ever-changing seascape in Trearddur Bay, Angelsey As well as producing ceramic canvases like this one, she also paints large pieces using acrylic or oil and with brushes or palette knives.
Seaside
In contrast, this seaside scene is all about summer. The azure sea looks like glass as soapy waves meander in irregular arcs, fizzing on the sand and gently lifting marine debris back and forth.
Children, nets and buckets in hand, scour sheltered rock pools for shrimps and small fish attempting to outwit limpets by creeping up on them from behind to prise them from their barnacle covered homes.
On occasion the opportunity to awaken rich red-coloured sea anemones lurking beneath the surface presents itself. These predatory animals have the appearance of harmless flowers put the stinging nematocysts in their tentacles is enough to paralyse their prey in order to move them to the mouth for digestion.
Barbara Layfield's textiles are constructed using a combination of wools, string, fabric, beads and driftwood and shells collected at the beach.
Larger pieces of driftwood, decorated with many different coloured paints included metallic and luminous hues are placed in her garden amongst the planting to glisten and shimmer in the sunshine.
Suburban Bird
This graceful urban stork is adorned with scrap metal, nuts and bolts and held together with papier mâché which is coloured bright yellow and neon pink. Its crest and tail feathers are festooned with plumes of plastic flowers and drapes of chains mimic the fuzz of soft down underneath. This gaudy suburban bird wades through rubbish tips, its keen eye seeking out food in urban trash and its oxidised beak picking through tin cans in the alleyways to the rear of 'The Suburbs' bar in Hoole, Chester.
Blue Grotto
This painting by Carolyn Dutton suggests that, as our plane navigates to its destination, the setting sun has been banished and a thunderstorm is developing beneath us. Lightening illuminates the thickly charged cumulonimbus clouds while sprites dance above them, their flashes shooting up into the stratosphere.
This charming row of daisies, chrysanthemums and sunflowers turn their heads towards the sun - pretty maids all in a row.
Eliza Brown studied painting and drawing at Manchester Metropolitan University and as well as producing beautiful greetings cards, also paints landscapes inspired by windswept beaches and wild stretches of coastline. She also writes and is currently working on a series of books for the under fives.
Stormy Night
In this crepuscular scene, sooty clouds build over the skyline to envelop remote dwellings where inhabitants sense the foreboding of an advancing storm.
Silver River
A pluvial season has saturated the ground, no longer capable of absorbing any more water. The lambent torrent, once a rivulet, has swollen and moves swiftly, bursting over the footpath in a deluge of mud and detritus.
The Starlit Border
As dusk falls and the light of the day fades, stars appear one by one like pin pricks on the inky sky, tiny apertures into an alternate universe. The heady perfume of night-scented flowers rises into the twilight; Mattiola longipetala (Night-scented Stock), Zaluzianskya Ovata (Night Phlox) and Nicotiana sylvestris (Flowering Tobacco Plant) release their fragrance towards the watchful nebulae.
Jenny Ryrie is a contemporary British artist who specialises in watercolour and acrylics, pushing the boundaries of expression with a wide variety of techniques. The Starlit Border was painted in response to the poetry of Charles Baudelaire, was exhibited during the Baudelaire Festival in Chester and won the Kate Fryer prize at the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists Open Exhibition.
A Clear Midnight
This is a detail from 'A Clear Midnight' by Leo Augustine Donaghy. It was inspired by a poem of the same name by Walt Whitman who describes midnight as a time during the day when the mind is clear from the stresses of the day and has time to reflect. The subtext of the poem, however, likens midnight and sleep with death; a death that consists of peace and tranquillity like that experienced at the end of a long day.
All of the artist's works on show at the exhibition were inspired by poets, and all are linked to the moon in some way. This link has been a mild passion/interest since childhood although this is the first time he has expressed it through his work.
Another piece of note is 'Where Willow the Wisp and Glow Worms Shine', inspired by a poem written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow about an imagined but fated dance to freedom for the Negro slave.
The medium is mono printing which is then deconstructed then reformed using colour and glazes.
This piece evokes memories of a day at the seaside; lazing on deck chairs under parasols in front of colourful beach huts, ice cream in hand.
Fields of Corn
As a light summer breeze creates ripples through the corn, the flexuous field whispers softly and indices me into its expanse. The sunshine fills my entire being with contentment as I meander, serene in my solitude, towards the hazy horizon in the distance.
Lady's Lace
A inflorescence profusion of Lady's Lace (Ammi majus) and Queen Anne's Lace (Daucus Carota) line the hedgerows in late Spring and Summer, swaying gently as we pass. A myriad of tiny white flowers form in delicate, lacy canopies and as they ripen, their prickly seeds attach themselves to birds, animals and clothing to be dispersed far and wide to propagate once more.
Ellie Ashby trained at Exeter School of Art and Design. Her work has been exhibited at the Business Design Centre in London, The Gorstella Gallery in Chester and the Grosvenor Museum.
Working and travelling through Asia for over a year, Wendy Connelly was struck by the enormity and importance of the sea, how it fulfils and nourishes, responds and destroys. The reliance on the resources leads to earnest respect. Consumed by its vastness Wendy was drawn to transient climatic conditions of the tropical heat, the burgeoning and thunderous passage of tropical storms and the subtle vanquish of the sublime. The delays in the sea in return to calm became and effervescent veil slowly being lifted t reveal layers of warmth and serenity.
Breath
'Breath' was the 'glow' of change, as the light announced the air, moving and bring the front to the land. This small painting is one of a collection inspired by a journey, a period watching the seas and changes of weather, in particular the monsoon. The tranquillity of the beach was transformed by a shift in light and air that moved the waters and clouds with a sense of weight. The changes were fleeting and threatening.
Wendy Connelly studied at St Martins School of art and has exhibited at the Barbican Centre, The Royal Academy, The Mall Galleries and Connaught Brown.
Julia Midgley spent time understanding the anatomy of horses as a student and since then they have appeared in her personal work. They are used metaphorically to represent a variety of things from Struggle; to Contemplation; to a thread that leads from one piece to another.
H is for horse is a skittish juvenile creature prancing through fresh spring grass. R is for Roan is more mature; an athletic beast biting at its rump to nip away hovering insects.
Other exhibitors included David Wilson, Elena Roman, Emma Long, Gregory Long, John Ingram, Christine Mayer, Zoe Walker, Laurie Kitchen, Mary Pilkington, Nichola Burton, Nicholas Ferencczy, Pam Parton, Susie Lyon-Heap, Trushi Hunter and Valerie Thompson.
No comments:
Post a Comment