An interview with Diana Crafer

Q – Could you introduce yourself briefly to the readers?

I am the present Chairperson of The Swindon Artists Forum and also a member of several other societies Marlborough Artists Society, Wiltshire Artists Society, Highworth Artists society and the late Swindon artists Society.

Swans in Queens Park

Q - How did you become interested in art?

I cannot remember when I wasn't. I have been interested in art as long as I can remember.

Riot in the Hedgerow - Pastel by Diana Crafer

Q - What inspires you most as an artist?

Lots of things inspire me: light on water, the fluid grace of an animal's body, sunsets, clouds formations... I could go on. Sometimes they swirl in my brain until the right moment comes.

The end of a lovely day - Pastel by Diana Crafer

Q - What is your favourite medium or media? Why?

My favourite medium is pastel. The immediacy of the medium delights me; I feel so close to the work in progress; no tools - just the pastel, my fingers and the support. I like the feeling of being so closely in touch with my work.

Q - Could you tell us some more about your work?

If I am painting a landscape or a seascape, I try to convey my own feelings at the time of seeing the view - it may be amusing or something that thrilled me or filled me with awe.

Land's End - pastel by Diana Crafer

Q - How would you define your style?

My work is conventional.


Q - What are your influences; artists from the past or present who inspire you?

There are many artists past and present whose work delights me but I try to make my work my own.

Evening Glow - Pastel by Diana Crafer

Q - How do you choose the subjects of your works?

Quite often I feel the subject chooses me, demanding that I paint it.

Q- How do you prepare yourself for an exhibition or a show like the Open Studios?

I have never formerly taken part in Open Studios. For an exhibition it would depend whether there was a theme, this would probably take time to think about first.


Q- Did you take part in the Swindon Open Studios in the past?

As I said, I have not taken part in Open studios before.

Q - Are there territories (media, subjects, etc.) you want to explore in the coming years?

I am always promising myself that I will try this or the other - time is the enemy.

The Champion - Pastel by Diana Crafer

Q - As an artist, what would be your dream?

To paint a picture and be completely satisfied with it.

Q - Could you share one thing that you have learnt in your own art practice that would be useful to other artists?

That the important thing is to enjoy whatever you are doing; to observe and be delighted in the beauty which is always to be found around one, even in the most surprising places.

An interview with Vital Peeters

Q – Could you introduce yourself briefly to the readers?

My name is Vital Peeters. For 20 years I have had a glass studio in Oxford and have done hundreds of commissions for stained glass panels around Oxford and abroad.
For 10 years I have been sculpting in stone.

Oxford Town Hall windows by Vital Peeters

Sitting room window by Vital Peeters

Q - How did you become interested in art?

From as soon as I could hold a pencil, I was drawing and it grew from there.

Q - What inspires you most as an artist?

Everything.

Nimbus (alabaster) by Vital Peeters

Q - What is your favourite medium or media? Why?

Glass, stone, anything to draw with. Every medium has its magical properties.

Q - Could you tell us some more about your work?

Most of my work is in glass and lead and is taylor made for apertures in buildings, mostly private. My largest to date is a 8 metre stretch of windows for St Christopher’s Hospice in London.

St Christopher's window, London - by Vital Peeters

My sculptures are mostly free style, and created in the sculptress, Pat Elmore’s studios (Longcote, nr Faringdon) one day a week. They are abstract and figurative and carved out of all types of stone.

Sleeping dragon by Vital Peeters

Q - How would you define your style?

My work often incoprorates all manner of inter-linking curves and circles and is distinguished by the use of contrasting textures.

Q - What are your influences; artists from the past or present who inspire you?

My influences are from the modernist period, with deco touches.
Like Picasso, I am also very interested in tribal art.

The onlookers 2008, linconshire stone by Vital Peeters

Q - How do you choose the subjects of your works?

Exhibitions, magazines, life.

Q- How do you prepare yourself for an exhibition or a show like the Open Studios?

99% perspiration…

Striding bird (marble cast) by Vital Peeters

Q- Did you take part in the Swindon Open Studios in the past?

No

Q - Are there territories (media, subjects, etc.) you want to explore in the coming years?

Recently, I have been doing some casting in glass in master workshops.
Welding metal is also in my mind.

Wing by Vital Peeters

Q - As an artist, what would be your dream?

To carry on as I am doing now.

Q - Could you share one thing that you have learnt in your own art practice that would be useful to other artists?

Always expect things to go wrong, then to have a success is always a triumph.
Never stop trying to find a new way of creating your work.

Make sure you visit Vital Peeters' website to see more of his works.

An interview with Pat Elmore

Q – Could you introduce yourself briefly to the readers?

Born in Rugby, I travelled around a bit being a railwayman’s daughter, but ended-up in Longcot, where I have lived since 1975.

Fossil - Stone resin - by Pat Elmore

Q - How did you become interested in art?

In a boring drawing office job, I carved the erasers with a one sided razor blade.

Q - What inspires you most as an artist?

My family of four sons and two daughters and a Morris dancer husband who looks like Father Christmas, also the flow of geometric shapes.

Q - What is your favourite medium or media? Why?

Wood and stone, its magic to carve natural materials that could be 1000s of years old.

The Plait - Walnut - by Pat Elmore

Q - Could you tell us some more about your work?

I am a direct carver I don’t work from drawings or maquettes; attitude and movement in my work is my aim and revealing the natural beauty of wood and stone.

Q - How would you define your style?

Being self taught my style is unique.

Nina 1 Soapstone by Pat Elmore

Q - What are your influences; artists from the past or present who inspire you?

Frans Hals for capturing the soul in a face and Rodin the master of attitude.

Q - How do you choose the subjects of your works?

My grey matter is so full of ideas, my problem is which one to use.

Nina 2 bronze resin by Pat Elmore

Q- How do you prepare yourself for an exhibition or a show like the Open Studios?


I tidy my studio, finish as much work as possible and prey to the gods.


Q- Did you take part in the Swindon Open Studios in the past?

Yes last year.

Q - Are there territories (media, subjects, etc.) you want to explore in the coming years?

No.

Q - As an artist, what would be your dream?

I would love to make a 6 metres high sculpture. My dream would be when I am pushing up daisies, that my work would still be giving people pleasure.


Q - Could you share one thing that you have learnt in your own art practice that would be useful to other artists?

Life is too short, so do what you enjoy, sod everything else, work from your soul, don’t let anyone influence you.

Go to the website of Pat Elmore to see more of her works.

An interview with Jane Milner-Barry

Q – Could you introduce yourself briefly to the readers?

I am a Londoner but have lived in Swindon and Highworth for twenty years. I work for Swindon Borough Council some of the time and have a typing speed of 82 words a minute. Painting is a much slower process unfortunately.

Blue and White by Jane Milner-Barry

Q - How did you become interested in art?

As children we are all interested in art. We enjoy playing about with colours and patterns, making likenesses of things, telling stories with pictures, all the different aspects of the visual arts. Some of us just have the good fortune not to grow out of this inclination.

Q - What inspires you most as an artist?

If I had waited to be inspired, I wouldn’t have got much done.

Cistus and Cranesbill by Jane Milner-Barry

Q - What is your favourite medium or media? Why?

I have always used oil paint, as well as drawing of course. Oil paint is slow to dry, often it doesn’t behave as you want, it’s cumbersome to use outdoors, the nicest colours are very expensive, and I don’t suppose years of inhaling white spirit have done me any good. However, as I know I have hardly even begun to explore what can be done with this medium, I don’t feel any urgent need to try another one.

Q - Could you tell us some more about your work?

I hope people will come and have a look at it on 12th and 13th September at the old Reference Library, Regent Circus, which is a really beautiful place for displaying paintings.

Q - How would you define your style?

A painter doesn’t have to think about his or her style. That’s a job for critics.

Empties by Jane Milner-Barry

Q - What are your influences; artists from the past or present who inspire you?

I like pretty well everything – but maybe Goya best of all, because of his seemingly casual technical mastery, his variety, his anger, the affection and empathy with which he paints some of his sitters, the wonderfully sinister quality which pervades his most idyllic pastoral scenes, all these things. I don’t like artworks that can be easily dismantled, or that require a lot of technical maintenance to keep them going - like, for instance, unmade beds, or dead sharks in tanks. That doesn’t seem right to me. Though I suppose those Goyas are kept in highly controlled environments and are constantly being monitored and restored!

Near Swindon we can see the perfection of stained glass at Fairford , the bewitching Sleeping Beauty paintings by Burne-Jones at Buscot House, and the Sandham Memorial Chapel, Stanley Spencer’s moving memorial to the dead of the First World War. In the Swindon Art Gallery there are some fine paintings including a terrific John Bellany, a double portrait of himself and his wife.

Q- How do you prepare yourself for an exhibition or a show like the Open Studios?

In June this year I had an exhibition at the gallery at Coleshill Village Shop which is a lovely place, well worth a visit any time! It was a very useful experience because I had to review all my work, tidy up some paintings and make the decision to throw some away.

Still Life with Lemons by Jane Milner-Barry

Q- Did you take part in the Swindon Open Studios in the past?

Last year I left it too late to take part, so I did my own open studio in Highworth, which was fun.

Q - Are there territories (media, subjects, etc.) you want to explore in the coming years?

New territories . . . maybe I’ll take to the road with a sketchbook and my dog.

Q - Could you share one thing that you have learnt in your own art practice that would be useful to other artists?

Look after your paintings properly. Put as many as you can on your walls. That is the safest way to store them, and you will be able to criticise them on your way to the fridge.

Swindon Open Studios on the Big Screen

Great news! A short video will be played on the Swindon Big Screen to promote the coming Swindon Open Studios 2009.

The slideshow will be on the Big Screen in Town Centre from Saturday 22 August. You can catch it during the dedicated local films slot between 6 p.m. and 6.30 p.m. on Wednesdays and between 12:30 p.m. and 1:00 p.m. on Fridays.

If you can't wait to see it, this trailer is also posted on YouTube.




WARNING: this video contains some nice music. Put your headset if you are in the office.

If the embedded video does not work, follow the link to the SOS 2009 trailer on YouTube.

An interview with Derek Gale

Q – Could you introduce yourself briefly to the readers?

My name is Derek Gale and I live Watchfield – where the wind turbines are - although I’m originally from the wilder, Heathland, side of Surrey.

Invisible Beauty 27 by Derek Gale

Q - How did you become interested in art?

I’ve been a photographer since I was a little boy, and had an inspiring Art teacher at school, Mr Wills. His nickname was “Fag End”*. I remember our class being given a description of Breugel’s painting “Hunters in the snow”, and then us having to draw/paint our interpretation of it. The results were fascinating.

* W D & H O Wills company used to make cigarettes.

Q - What inspires you most as an artist?

I’m inspired by how some artists can make a single brush stroke or pencil line perfectly represent a place, a person or creature, or even an emotion.

Invisible Beauty 32 by Derek Gale

Q - What is your favourite medium or media? Why?

My current favourite medium is photography – although I have started painting in acrylics. Very, very much a beginner with those though!

Q - Could you tell us some more about your work?

It has different areas and freedoms. In one area, as a professional portrait photographer, I am constrained to an extent by needing to please the client. With my Fine Art photography I only have to please myself, so I can take images free of any constraints.

Invisible Beauty 36 by Derek Gale

Q - How would you define your style?

I try and keep things simple. Whilst some of my latest abstract Fine Art images seem complex on first examination, there is an underlying simplicity, either in their colour palette or the compositional structure.

Q - What are your influences; artists from the past or present who inspire you?

In my portrait photography I’m influenced by such photographers as Richard Avedon and Jane Bown, and love the work of National Geographic photographer Tim McCurry. My Fine Art photography style has been influenced a lot by an old Kodak Desk diary! There are some wonderful “landscape abstractions” in there, especially by Gwen Fidler and Willard Clay.

Q - How do you choose the subjects of your works?

To some extent I am driven by events. For example, my current series of images came out of an attempt to take another sort of image. I saw the results and loved them, even though they weren’t what I wanted to do.

Invisible Beauty 48 by Derek Gale

Q- How do you prepare yourself for an exhibition or a show like the Open Studios?

I am preparing for Open Studios by producing a small series of large (1 metre wide), colourful, abstract photographic images that are printed on a surprising medium. The results should be very eye-catching!

Q- Did you take part in the Swindon Open Studios in the past?

This is my first Open Studio, although I have exhibited in Oxfordshire Artweeks, and had solo shows including The Wyvern Theatre and the Western Library.

Invisible Beauty 73 by Derek Gale

Q - Are there territories (media, subjects, etc.) you want to explore in the coming years?

As previously mentioned, I am trying to get to grips with acrylics. I don’t exclude mixing paint, computer editing, and photography together. The latest mixed media work by David Hockney is very interesting.



Q - As an artist, what would be your dream?

I would love someone who is building a new hotel to commission me to provide all the art for the public spaces and bedrooms.



Q - Could you share one thing that you have learnt in your own art practice that would be useful to other artists?

“Look different”: meaning that they should try and look at things in a different way. A useful tip is to turn an object upside down, which gets you away from its familiar outline and context.


Make sure you visit Derek Gale’s website to see more of his work.

An interview with Sue Dickinson

Q – Could you introduce yourself briefly to the readers?

My name is Sue Dickinson, I’m originally from Plymouth, but have been living and working in Swindon for the past 9 years

Q - How did you become interested in art?

My interest in art came from taking an evening class in ceramics run by Swindon College, I enjoyed it so much, I then did a years access course followed by a 2 year HND in ceramics

Q - What inspires you most as an artist?

What inspires me most as an artist is the sea, pebbles and washed up articles found on the shoreline. I also love it when people praise my work-don’t we all!

Q - What is your favourite medium or media? Why?

My current favourite medium is clay especially porcelain slip (liquid clay) and crank clay-both have such different textures and qualities

Q - Could you tell us some more about your work?

I create pendants that are very tactile, like washed up shiny pebbles on the beach. As a sideline, I’ve just started producing small ornamental cats-I love cats and have made a few in the past for friends

Jewellery by Sue Dickinson

Q - How would you define your style?

Each piece of my jewellery is hand crafted, so each piece is unique.

Q - What are your influences; artists from the past or present who inspire you?

A few of my favourite ceramicists who are influencing my work include Paul Jackson, Nicky May and Charlotte Jones who are all from the present day

Q - How do you choose the subjects of your works?

From being influenced by the elements and the weather-the sea can be all different colours and take on so many shapes depending on the weather

Q- How do you prepare yourself for an exhibition or a show like the Open Studios?

I am preparing for open studio by producing as much as I can beforehand! I have a shared studio space at Wagon Yard in Marlborough, which I share with 3 other potters and we all give each other a lot of support and encouragement when it comes to exhibitions!


Q- Did you take part in the Swindon Open Studios in the past?

This is my first open studio

Q - Are there territories (media, subjects, etc.) you want to explore in the coming years?

I’d like to do more with textiles and somehow use textiles and ceramics together-but that’s a long way off!

Q - As an artist, what would be your dream?

To run my own shop in Devon/Cornwall where every article I made got sold!

Q - Could you share one thing that you have learnt in your own art practice that would be useful to other artists?

Keep at it and believe in your dreams!

An interview with David H Jones

Q – Could you introduce yourself briefly to the readers?

My roots are in Wallasey, Merseyside. Foundation studies at at Wallasey School of Art, and then graphic design at Leicester Polytechnic. Not happy with the prospects a career in advertising, I left and transferred to fine art painting at Bristol West of England College of Art. Which was really what I wanted to do. Whilst there I married Judith a fellow student, graduated, moved to Berkshire, had three children, established a paint-work restoration business and tutored painting and drawing. I have lived in Lambourn for the last thirty years, and I balance restoration work with doing my own paintings. I have a large studio and workshop space at nearby Foxbury Farm.

Distribution 2 -2008-Acrylic on canvas (46 x 46cm) by David H Jones

Q - How did you become interested in art?

I was fortunate to have parents who didn’t mind a mess and they encouraged creative activities and a grandmother who loved impressionism Like most children I loved to paint and I have an early recollection of the frustration of trying to get hold of a paint box which was out of my reach. When I was about eight, whilst on a family holiday, I met an artist selling his paintings half way up a Welsh mountain and thought I’d like to do that. I bought a postcard of his painting which is now pinned to the studio wall. As a child I was afflicted by a speech impediment, a combination of a stutter and speaking nonsense. I overcame the stutter through speech therapy which was great because it meant getting out of school early, going to a clinic each week and just sitting on the floor painting, whilst a very nice lady chatted to me. I overcame the stutter, the nonsense is sometimes still a problem.
So from childhood I got it into my head that I was going to be an artist.

Q - What inspires you most as an artist?

My inspiration comes from near and far, the exotic and the mundane. Visits abroad, India, Turkey, North Africa, ancient cultures and the work of generations of artists.
But on a daily basis it is the wonders of the everyday visual experience; the energy of colour and the changing light of day, the progression of the seasons, the rhythm of life and natures patterns.

2009' Circulation-on-R by David H Jones

Q - What is your favourite medium or media? Why?

No particular favourite although I work mainly in acrylic.
I like oil paint for its richness and smell, acrylic for its speed of application and water-colour for its directness.

Q - Could you tell us some more about your work?

At art school I produced large abstract paintings. After art school I didn’t do any of my own work for about fifteen years. In the late 1980’s I was invited to tutor water-colour classes for adult education. I didn’t really have a clue about water-colour painting, but it was an opportunity for me to learn, as it was for my students. This brought me back to basic traditional disciplines of observational drawing and painting; still life, landscape and the figure. During the 90’s I took on more classes, teaching painting and life drawing. By the late 90’s my interests had shifted back to earlier abstract ideas about pattern and colour although informed by my work on landscape and the figure.

My Recent paintings explore themes of circulation and rotation. Visits to Turkey and Tunisia in 2006/7 had an important influence on this work. In Turkey I was mesmerized by Islamic ceramic tiles. In Tunis I visited the Archeological Museum to see the collection of Roman Mosaics. The tessellated surface patterns of the mosaics and repetitive motifs of tile patterns initiated experiments which developed into this series of paintings which play upon the viewer’s cognitive response to pattern and contrasting colour. The sequences of colours on a common ground create a restless and often alarming visual response as patterns emerge from seemingly random marks. The paintings are further enriched with a high build of paint and textured surfaces.

This year , these ideas have been further developed in a series of painting entitled Arboretum, inspired after visiting Westonbirt last autumn.

2009 - 'Arboretum - Autumn Yellow' - acrylic on canvas (95x74cm) by David H Jones

Q - How would you define your style?

I don’t really know. Contemplative – Energising - Colourful Abstract Painting.

Q - What are your influences; artists from the past or present who inspire you?

Too many to mention mostly gone before.: English Romantics: Turner, Palmer,- The Impressionists Monet, Pissarro,- Masters of the modernism, Kandinsky, Picasso - Constructivists & Cubists, American & British Abstract painters, - Tutors Paul Feiler & Terry Frost.


Q - How do you choose the subjects of your works?

Often from a momentary observation. A combination of colours.

Q- How do you prepare yourself for an exhibition or a show like the Open Studios?

Usually at the last minute

2009 - 'Circulation on Yellow Orange' - acrylic on canvas (95x74cm)

Q- You took part in the Swindon Open Studios in the past, what did it bring to you?

In 2007, I exhibited several paintings at the old railway museum in Faringdon Road.

Q - Are there territories (media, subjects, etc.) you want to explore in the coming years?

Yes, but no specific objectives apart from trying to get present projects completed.

Q - As an artist, what would be your dream?

More Time

Q - Could you share one thing that you have learnt in your own art practice that would be useful to other artists?

Have faith and conviction in what you’re doing.