NICK GARDNER

I live in Brighton and work at the Red Herring Studios a co-op of artists based in Portslade, Brighton.

I enjoyed a range jobs before heading for college, including gardener, boatbuilder, joiner, set builder and commercial painter. I studied at Norwich and Sheffield Schools of Art and the University of Brighton. This led on to teaching undergraduate artists and theatre makers, in time becoming head of the Northbrook College department of theatre, music and visual arts, a post I left to resume painting.

My early practical experience informs exploration of a range of materials and approaches. These in themselves become means of investigation and play. I use cold wax, oils, dry pigments and collage to build images.

My paintings lie between abstract and the figurative, drawing on landscape and still-life, dialogue with media and history. They are I hope, oblique observations on the world we live in.

PAINTINGS

Paintings from 2018 through to late 2022 Most are on canvas, a number of smaller works are on panel or paper. These are predominantly painted in oils and cold wax but I am excited by and utilise a range of materials and mediums which are integrated into work in search of textures and the substance which best embody ideas I am exploring. The source of the imagery is something of a mystery to me: found in, tripped over, muddled up and derived from objects, feelings and observations of the world, stray writings, photographs and paintings. As my work has evolved it has moved away from but is not divorced from figuration.

WORKS ON PAPER

Paintings and sketches created from 2019 to 2022 in a range of media; oils, acrylic, conte, charcoal, pigments and pencil……… These works are both expressions of ideas in themselves and explorations that might inform larger paintings. Sometimes they are the result of wanting to experiment with new tools, brushes or materials, returning to themes and shapes which form part of my visual vocabulary – lumps, organs, ship and house structures, triangles, stalks, rocks, rubble, pebbles, clouds, cliffs, horizons.

ART AT 21 and GALLERY 40 – BRIGHTON OPEN HOUSES

In celebration of the launch of a new Open House in 2019 we brought together a rich body of paintings, sculpture, photography, prints and cards from an exciting mix of innovative and diverse artists, drawing on a range of abstract and figurative themes.

In 2021 Art at 21 relocated for a long weekend to 1 Rigden Road,Hove as a Brighton Open House pop-up . Shorter on time – richer in variety.

In 2022 we, as a now established group of artists including Festival Cover Artist, Gary Goodman returned to splendid 21 Montpelier Crescent for a hugely successful month long exhibition.

I will be exhibiting with two different artists, Rebecca Angel and Thea Thomson in the December Open Houses at Gallery 40 in Brighton.

Art at 21 is part of the ‘vibrant’ Seven Dials Trail.

Kate Strachan

Kate was a member of Red Herring studios from1994 and joined Phoenix Brighton in 2008. During this time she has enjoyed working free-lance in a variety of media as a designer and maker, including: costume and set design, textiles, Youth/ community projects, residencies, teaching, and corporate events.
More recently Kate has returned to painting having :
‘found my old painting again and what l saw this time was something deeply familiar on several levels.

For many years l’ve used pots and domestic objects as subjects for silkscreen prints on textiles and paper and l was overwhelmed by the relationship between the imagery I’m fascinated with now and a piece of work l’d done over 25 years ago.’
Kate’s work is both elegant and timeless.

Milena Deparis

Born in Paris and raised in South-East Asia , Milena has been photographing for the past eleven years exploring and capturing images in cultures worldwide.
With an interest in all creative processes, Milena studied at the University of Brighton, compiling her first photography series titled Hidden Canvases. This series and subsequent collections explore the immense beauty Milena identifies in the unobserved imperfections and irregularities of our surrounding world.
Milena’s imagery often discovers acute political resonance in the visual poetry of the urban landscape.

Gary Goodman

Gary is a painter and poet. His imagery is resoundingly direct, unbothered by artistic self-consciousness and politeness; unrefined, unmannerly yet sensitive. He simply wishes to say ‘hello’ to the world as it passes him by.
Gary has exhibited his paintings and prints and has performed his poetry around the world: from the frozen wastes of Norway and Alaska down to the warmth of New Zealand and the Southern States of USA
‘There is a good deal of the shamanic in Goodman.‘ Prof Michael Tucker
‘Gary Goodman is driven – his work is elemental, searching, honest‘ Veronica Travers

Kate Scott

Abstract painter Kate Scott is an exciting colourist whose work generates a sense of harmony underscored by tensions, collisions and questions. Kate instinctively uses an extensive palette, drawing and markmaking to convey emotion in response to nature and memory, often being inspired viscerally by music.
She says ‘There is often a battle between recklessness and control, natural expression and artificial order, the resulting truce being a feeling of balance, as if the images had just come into being, depicting a world within themselves.’
Recently Kate has been exploring the relationship between the space above the horizon and the solidity or not of what exists beneath, both in actuality/pictorially and metaphorically, the conscious and the unconscious.

Nick Gardner

Nick’s work bisects the horizon that divides the abstract and the figurative, exploring themes and objects set in a no-where land, landscapes or interiors.

Ingrid Boucher

Employing harmony, balance, simplicity, purity, shape and line, Ingrid recreates the beauty that inspires her work, found in the human face, figure, animals or nature. For Ingrid , a successful piece sparks emotion and captures the essence of human spirit that connects us all.
The search for the timeless is reflected in her use of clay – an ancient material used by artists throughout the ages.