Private art trial in conjunction with the Eagle Gallery and Bedford Fringe
Open for viewing when the club is open.
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ARTISTS
Sally Pennycate
Sally Pennycate is an artist inspired by the beauty and forms of nature, working from the countryside around her including the Castle Ashby Estate. As a landscape painter Sally distills the natural world into reflective, meditative pieces that seem haunting and immersive.
Over the last few years Sally developed a way to incorporate elements of the landscape within the canvas. Loving the trees, grasses and leaves that create the landscape Sally takes these natural materials and breathes new life into them, capturing the structural and textural elements and drawing them out with paint and medium. It is this tactile, building up of texture and detail that brings the dead foliage back to life with a new beauty and purpose. These humble grasses and natural materials are dried and pressed before being immortalised within a hardening material so that they are embedded within the canvas in a layering process, built up with paint and metallic mica powders. Her art practice is environmentally conscious with water-based environmentally friendly materials as much as possible as she hopes to illustrate the beauty of the landscape and what we have to lose by destroying it.
Anja Penger-Onyett
Painting with minerals and fire
As a ceramic artist I am largely self-taught, starting pottery as a hobby in evening classes over 30 years ago.
10 years ago, I decided to turn my hobby into a full-time profession.
My work is mostly thrown on the potters-wheel and then altered and sculpted. I like to make decorative ceramics either for display in the garden, on a balcony or on a patio or indoors. I also make functional ceramics, again thrown on the potters-wheel and altered to obtain unusual forms.
I am inspired by natural forms, flowers and seed-heads. When I make my pieces, I try to emphasize the characteristics of an instantly recognisable shape. For example, my poppy seed heads have large crowns which are even more pronounced by the vibrant colour of glass-frits in the middle.
All work is either fired in an electric kiln or under reduction conditions in a gas-fired kiln to stoneware temperatures. This makes the decorative pieces frost-proof and suitable for outdoors all year round.
I want to let the glazes tell a story inspired by nature, travel, landscape and environment: my way of painting with minerals and fire
Elaine Kelly
Elaine grew up in Wales & this is where her passion for painting and drawing started at an early age. Elaine obtained a BA in Fine Art from the University of Wales before moving to Hertfordshire where she spent nearly 10 years living on a canal boat. It was here that she first found her love of making kiln formed glass pieces, inspired by the continuing natural forms and scenery around her. Elaine now lives near Bedford and she has her own on-site studio where the vibrant work is created.
Elaine has been featured in “World of Interiors” magazine recently combining her glass work with antiques and has exhibited her work extensively across Hertfordshire, Wales and in parts of London.
Elaine regularly runs workshops at her studio in Bedford where learners can work with glass, prints & eco-printing.
Jo Spyropoulos
I trained as a painter at Camberwell under the rigorous tuition of Euan Uglow, but laced with the vibrant and passionate approach of Frank Auerbach, and Kitaj. After a year of teaching in Cameroon, West Africa, my career in England culminated in a job as Head of Art at St. Albans High School for Girls.
I moved to Bedford in 2011 and continue to paint and print. My most successful work has been when a synthesis of information and feeling are expressed spontaneously. Etching provides the considered detail of line that can be so satisfying, but monoprint and collagraph allow the expression of mood in colour and texture. I find the most direct expression in oil painting, with no process to interfere with the ideas.
