PYRAMID Gallery director Terry Brett turns the spotlight on the abstract expressionist paintings of gallery debutant Janine Baldwin and the cast glass of Kim Bramley when he rehangs his ongoing Thirty30 show in York this weekend.
“As part of our 30th anniversary series of exhibitions, we’re now focusing on two artists who work with colour and texture, creating abstract images inspired by their surroundings,” says Terry, who will launch the Expressions show with an official re-opening from 11am to 2.30pm tomorrow.
Janine Baldwin, who lives in Scarborough, is exhibiting for the first time in York. She graduated in 2001 with a fine art degree at the University of York’s Scarborough campus, since when she has exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts and Society of Women Artists in London.
Her work is held in private collections in Britain, Germany, Sardinia, the Netherlands, Mexico and Africa, and Scarborough playwright Sir Alan Ayckbourn, no less, is among those collectors.
Not surprisingly, given her chosen home, she draws inspiration from the Yorkshire coast and Moors.
“My work is the expression of a lifelong affinity with the landscape, together with the development of a formal abstract visual language,” says Janine, whose primary influences are abstract expressionism, particularly Willem de Kooning and the evocative colours of Cornish art.
“Living and working on the North Yorkshire coast, I find this environment a constant source of inspiration in terms of exploring the ever-changing light, colours and forms of land and sea.
“My paintings are celebratory and energetic. I build a gradual layering of paint to create them, and I often use oil sticks – oil paint in solid form – to integrate painting and drawing.”
Glass artist Kim Bramley has set up home in an idyllic setting on the edge of a country estate in Staffordshire, where she has converted a stable block at Sandon Hall into a studio.
After studying fashion and textile design at St. Martins School of Art, in London, she took to working with paper, then with glass.
Her present techniques have evolved from experimenting for nine years at her first studio on the Isle of Skye and attending courses with several glass makers.
The Expressions exhibition and continuing Thirty30 show, featuring jewellery, ceramics, sculpture and glass by 30 different artists, can be seen in the two first-floor rooms at Pyramid Gallery, in Stonegate, until the end of August, and online at pyramidgallery.com
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