Rachel Arif is a Lancashire-born artist, known for her energetic seascape paintings as well as her landscape and figurative works. She is a member of Manchester Academy of Fine Arts, The Small Paintings Group and more recently, Associate Member of The Society of Women Artists.

Her weather filled seascapes, portray the relationship between the land, sea and the forces of nature, closely mirroring the way in which the land and weather can shape our emotions, hopes and aspirations as human beings. Her work is textured, magnetic and atmospheric.

Rachel is better recognised for her sea and landscapes but also paints more figurative melancholic works, still life interpretations and portraits, all of which she tries to capture the fundamental soul and substance of each subject. Several of her pastel drawings and oil paintings have been selected for The Pastel Society, the RBA (Royal Society of British Artists), The SWA (Society of Women Artists), The NEAC (New English Art Club) and The ING Discerning Eye. “I like to paint everyday life situations, the mundane even, such as a sorrowful man, a girl in a cafe or some flowers past their sell by date”, Rachel Says. Collectors describe Arif’s works (her figurative work in particular) to have an almost antique/vintage feel to them, as though painted in a past era, yet still retaining a contemporary feel.

Sonia Barton’s interest in handmade objects is explored in her still life paintings through a muted palette and the juxtaposition of simple forms and shapes. Sonia gained a BA Hons in Fine Art at Staffordshire University, followed by a Post-Graduate Diploma in Fine Art Printmaking at Brighton University, gaining the highest grade of Honours.

Sonia applies colour to her canvas with brushes, palette knives, rags and rollers. Many layers of paint are added, areas are scraped back, lines and marks appear and disappear. A certain 'settling in' of the subject with the surface takes place. Her interest in aged, worn and worked surfaces both from interiors and the coastal environment are a strong influence on her work. Her paintings reflect memories, thoughts and observations of everyday life which are interwoven through each painting.

Susanna Bauer was born in Eichstätt, Germany in 1969 and was raised in the countryside, where she developed a passion for nature and the land. She studied Landscape Architecture at the Technische Universität in Munich and during that time she also worked at the Jardin des Plantes botanical gardens in Montpellier, France. She went on to become a modelmaker and spent two decades working in film and television. From 2007 to 2008 she studied at Camberwell College of Art and began to combine her love of nature with her finely tuned technical skills, laying the foundation for her future art practice. Susanna has exhibited in the UK, USA, Sweden, Italy, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan and India.

“I work with natural leaves and crochet, creating an intimate dialog with nature. Found leaves are repaired, embellished and combined using handmade lace crochet – a laborious traditional technique relying on tension, set in direct relationship to the fragile natural material. The resulting forms are a meditation on the beauty and intricacy found in the natural world and a reflection of complex and tender relationships both within ourselves and our environment. There is a fine balance in my work between fragility and strength; literally, when it comes to pulling a fine thread through a brittle leaf or thin dry piece of wood, but also in a wider context - the tenderness and tension in human connections, the transient yet enduring beauty of nature that can be found in the smallest detail, vulnerability and resilience that could be transferred to nature as a whole or the stories of individual beings”.

Tim Copsey lives in the Peak District and has worked professionally as a potter since 2016. In 2019 he was awarded an artist development grant by the Arts Council of England allowing him to rebuild his wood kiln which he uses today.

Tim’s ceramics combine the opulent and the organic. The Peak District, which surrounds his home and studio, is a lively landscape filled with motion, flux, texture and luster, providing both inspiration and material. The gold and silver in Copsey’s work is a response to rushing waterfalls and the dark reflections of peat pools. The Peak’s rock formations inspire layered, undulating and coarse forms; grit, stone and granite are often folded into the surface itself. In this way, his pieces are both about and of the landscape. Whether hand-building or throwing, his process is an interaction with material, beginning with adaptations in clay; pushing each piece to the limits of stability, before investigating the interactions of glazes and the conversation with the kiln, a push and pull between control, submission and fluid transformations which are often unexpected. His process results in pieces which are mercurial: shifting with the light, modifying in each angle viewed, conversing with their environment.  

Devon based artist Frances Gynn RWA makes work informed by environmental issues. Through drawings and paintings her practice reflects growing concerns over the effects of plastics in the ecosystem, deforestation, habitat loss and the decline of precious species. 

Frances graduated with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from the University of Exeter in 2000. She has participated in numerous site-specific events and exhibitions, including the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, and in 2018 and 2019 she was selected for the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize exhibition. In 2018 she was awarded a Fellowship at The Bogliasco Foundation, Italy and in 2019 she was elected as a Royal West of England Academy Academician. Her recent Public Erasure projects have focused on drawing and performing an interactive body of work on endangered species.

“My work has, for some time, been informed by nature and man’s engagement with it. As plastics become more evident in the landscape, my artistic practice reflects a growing concern for the human effect on the environment. Deforestation and tree clearing have led to a direct loss of many species as well as a reduction in available food, shelter and breeding habitats. To emphasise the demise of many species of the natural world, I invite the public to erase one of my drawn organisms as a public interactive performance. Process is an important part of my work, echoing the characteristics of my subject. I layer diluted oil paint, use paint resists, rub away paint with sandpaper and take paint castings of found plastic objects which I incorporate into my paintings”.

Bethany Kohrt is a contemporary artist living and working in the Wiltshire countryside. Her interest is in abstract, decorative forms alongside atmospheric elements of physical landscapes. She works on canvas, working in thick and thin layers that are then scrubbed, sanded, scorched and scraped back to reveal an analogous history of the layers of time, experience and memories. 

Bethany studied Fine Art at Camberwell College of Art in London and Newcastle University in England and obtained an Honours Degree in Art History and Theory. Bethany undertook CASS (Contemporary Art) at the Royal College of Art in 2022 and has just completed a two year, full time MA in Fine Art at London art school, Central Saint Martins for which she achieved a Distinction. As part of her MA graduation, Bethany was nominated for the MullenLowe NOVA Award for Creative Talent and was and was also awarded the Pinsent Masons x CSM Award for Excellence.

“My painting is a visual journey back and forth between internal and external landscapes. I am drawn to the natural landscape - not the topographical elements, or ‘views’ in a moment of time, but rather the wider experience of belonging within that place. My artistic language and internal landscapes are derived from culturally borrowed decorative objects of my childhood in Hong Kong where Chinese antiques, Indonesian and Balinese lamps, as well as indigo dyed textiles formed the visual world that I grew up in. I see the natural world through the lens of these objects, which are a memorialisation of belonging and loss; a type of visual archaeology where memories are embedded in layers of paint and intuitive mark making. I see these symbols of remembrance, personal ancestry and collective grief in my surroundings as expressions of my own internal and external landscapes”. 

Penny Little creates intimate, hand formed porcelain works that nestle into the hand and exude a luxurious, tactile quality. She works with gold and platinum lustre as part of a long process of handforming, carving, finishing, firing, glazing, and then refiring in order to add the magic and alchemy of each piece’s dazzling interior surface. In 2018 she was awarded The Maker’s Choice Award by North Devon Ceramics Academy and Studio at the Festival of Ceramics.

“I am a self-taught ceramicist and I hand-form my delicate porcelain vessels, bowls and vases out of black and white porcelain. I line most of my work with platinum and gold lustre adding depth, reflection and celebration, leaving the exterior of each piece unglazed to create a tactile juxtaposition with the smooth 'molten-looking’ lustre interior and the more organic rougher exterior. I never make anything bigger than I can comfortably create in my hand because I like to keep an unbroken connection to the clay throughout the making process. My work is fluid, fine and asymmetrical and no two pieces are ever the same. I am inspired by the elements, especially the sea and I like to create pieces full of movement and individuality”.

Matilda Smyth is a visual artist working primarily in painting and drawing. She recently graduated with a BA (Hons) in Painting, Drawing & Printmaking from Arts University Plymouth, where she was selected to exhibit in Velarde’s Winter Exhibition as part of the South West Artist Graduate Award. She will continue to develop her practice through the Drawing Year postgraduate program at the Royal Drawing School in London.

Matilda's work centers around the remembered landscape, how place is strongly linked with memory and emotion. She is exploring the transition into adulthood and leaving the ‘places’ of childhood behind. By painting and remembering places of the present and past, it is a way of maintaining a closeness to the land, as it gradually moves further away both physically in change but also as time moves forward, never again returning to those moments. Smyth’s practice works across a range of paper, board and sculpture, through painting, printing and drawing.