Wendy and Dorothea have both been working on new paintings for this show.

ARTIST STATEMENT – Dorothea Huntrods.

As a young student, I started painting in the traditional way using oils on canvas and board – an exercise I still enjoy immensely. I like the immediacy of painting, the mixing and layering of colour, texture on texture. I’m very much a colour person, and am strongly aware of their enegies and vibrations – of the effect of one colo9ur has on another – so that the slightest change may dramatically affect the sense of place and atmosphere.

After recently experimenting with collography where I chose to use smallish, A4 size plates, ~I am now exploring painting again but on a larger  scale. I’m using acrylics, collage and other mixed media on heavy watercolour paper. The paper itself produces wonderful textures. Working from light to dark, I may apply several layers of colour and sometimes collage (paper, fabric etc) to give the painting greater depth of form and colour.

The two subjects which inspire me a lot are landscape and figurative and may be drawn completely from imagination and memory.

ARTIST STATEMENT – Wendy Oxlade

My first creative work, aged six, was a poem about flowers playing in the spring sunshine, reflecting an aspect of my childhood, playing with my cousins in our garden, as a  kind of utopia. Some of my new painting/ drawings reflect the same sheer delight with the world, as “all that jazz”,and”musical riff”………

By contrast a visit to north Wales last year has funded some landscapes/abstracts  preoccupied with the slate quarries of Blanaeu Ffestiniog and the notion of beauty in ugliness or the transfoming powers of art. Continuing this quest, two paintings one of a figure, the other a portrait of K, use the genre of stained glass, its  pure colour and composition to create “modern icons”, with homage to the south west trancept of Canterbury Cathedral.

My influences are far and wide, and as a graduate of Camberwell Art School, the Auerbach/Bomberg lineage versus Uglow/ Coldsteam/Sickert lineage created the lively dialogue and debate that inspires art students to develope their own expression.

This show is not to be missed, with my fellow artist Dorothea Huntrods creating the other half of the artistic debate.