Exploring colour, form, texture, materials and composition.
Julia Cooper's studio overlooks the Fowey estuary and so the changing lights reflected off the water invariably provide inspiration for her palette. Julia’s abstract paintings are a series of colour notes observed from wild Cornish beaches, coastline and moods of the weather.
The subjects in her still life paintings jostle amongst themselves in various bucolic arrangements of flattened perspective and simplistic narrative with softened palettes. Julia regards the works of the St Ives Artists particularly that of William Scott and Patrick Heron as having influenced her own work.
Julia has had five solo exhibitions at David Simon Contemporary and has exhibited across Cornwall, Bristol and London. She studied Fine Art and Interior Design and worked for The National Trust.
Vanessa Gardiner is an experienced artist, with some 25 solo exhibitions including London shows. Trained at Central Scool of Art, she has work in the collections of British Academy, London, British School, Athens, Magdelen College, Oxford, New Hall, Cambridge and Dorset Museum. "As a landscape painter I am captivated both by the beauty of the places on which my work is based and by the processes involved during the making of the pictures. In a sense, for me, they go hand-in-hand: the immediacy of drawing directly from the seemingly haphazard natural subject matter, with the careful selection and ordering of the compositions back in the studio." Concentrating on the coastlines around Cornwall, Ireland and the Isle of Skye, she explores the connecting elements found within these landscapes; each shaped and weathered in common by the Atlantic Ocean and all are strongly characterised by their individual and compelling features of grand coastal scenery.
Sir Howard Hodgkin RA (1932 – 2017) was educated at Eton College and Bryanston School, Dorset. He had decided on a career in art in early childhood and ran away from school to pursue this. He studied at Camberwell Art School and later at Bath Academy of Art. Hodgkin's first solo show was in London in 1962. In 1980, Hodgkin was invited by John Hoyland to exhibit work as part of the Hayward Annual at the Hayward Gallery. In 1981, Hodgkin had collaborated with the Rambert Dance Company's Resident Choreographer, Richard Alston, for his abstract work 1981 for the production of Night Music and later for the production of Pulcinella in 1987. In 1984, Hodgkin represented Britain at the Venice Biennale, in 1985 he won the Turner Prize, and in 1992 he was knighted.
Nicky Knowles RWA studied Fine Art at Bristol UWE Nicky and won the RWA young painters award. Her work has been exhibited her work across the UK and Europe. Nicky works intuitively, putting down colour, marks and shapes in paint and paper aiming to create an image of balance and unity. "My collages explore a dialogue between paint and paper. They reflect a process of lyrical play with cut and torn forms from new and heavily worked materials which I distress using wax and paint. I love the process of distressing the paper and canvas before I start to collage and then incorporating these historic materials alongside new paper or a cleanly painted surface. There is a tension between the new and the old and the balancing of the shapes that I find beautiful and endlessly fascinating."
Nicky's collage work echoes the mid century British art scene that she so admires but she has also developed her own distinguishable style which is both strong in its confident use of scale, mark making and lyrical composition.
Clare Packer’s work is primarily abstract with a nod to landscape and interiors. Lately she has also been working with more directly figurative imagery, with particular reference to classical and antique profile heads. All works are collage, acrylic emusion on paper
‘My pictures are perhaps not collages in the conventional sense. I think of them also as paintings. The materials are not found. I paint pattern and texture on to sheets of paper, which I then cut and tear to create the images that make up my seascapes, landscapes, still lifes and classical heads. Colour and pattern, often directly inspired by my experience of landscape, are very important to me.’
Clare Packer (b. 1941) trained at Wimbledon School of Art (1959-63) gained her teaching certificate at Brighton College of Art (1963-64). Ceramic Diploma (1995-1997). Clare returned to art in the 90’s first as a ceramicist and then moving to collage in in the 2000s. She hashad her work exhibited in London for many years and makes her debut in Somerset with David Simon Contemporary in this exhibition.
Ex. 113
