Tag Archives: flowers

ARTWORKS: Julia Groves and the alchemy of pigments

This year my continuing journey into the alchemy of pigments and paint making has led me to explore metal leaf.

I found learning how to do this more physical activity, than some of my detailed botanical work, was easier for me to engage with as it required a different kind of focus during lockdown.

The preciousness and impermanence of this human life were in my thoughts whilst making this work

ulia-groves-artworks-blue-rose-2020

These new paintings delve once again into the worlds of the rose and the poppy, with a focus on formal and symbolic qualities of light and shadows.

julia-groves-artworks-poppies-2020

The pieces also have an ever-changing movement which is created as light plays with the lustre of the metal surface.

Julia Groves

Recent & new exhibitions

I am showing work at the Wildwood Gallery in Bury St Edmunds this summer, work can be seen at the gallery or is also on their website.
www.wildwoodgallery.co.uk

I will be exhibiting work as part of the Iceni Botanical Artists online exhibition from early October.
www.icenibotanicalartists.co.uk

Five artists go to a deserted farmhouse: Suffolk Open Studios art exhibition

Longs Farm, an enchanting medieval farmhouse currently standing empty in rural Suffolk, provides an inspiring and unique setting for the artwork of five distinctive artists, who are all participating in Suffolk Open Studios in June 2014.


Wire Sculpture of a Cockerel by Jenny Goater

Christine McKechnie and Gillian Crossley-Holland, both founder members of Artworks, will be joining ex-member Jenny Goater, with fellow artists Jane West and Nicolette Hallett, to fill the entire farmhouse with the best of their art as a precursor to opening their art studios to the public in June.  The exhibition will contain a selection of drawings, paintings, collage and sculpture.


Painting by Nicolette Hallett

Christine McKechnie will have on show her popular, intricately crafted, watercolour-painted cut paper collages. These are personal memories of places evoked in colour. They could be of her garden outside her art studio, on which she spends much time and love, a tree down the green lane analysed on her daily walk, or visits to the Suffolk coast. There are also collages of loved places further afield – Glyndebourne in Sussex, Seatoller in the Lake District, the Arsenale in Venice, Thailand, Cambodia, and Hong Kong.


Collage by Christine McKechnie

Gillian Crossley-Holland will be displaying her distinctive and evocative paintings of the Lopham Fens and the North Norfolk coast. These are paintings that explore her love of crossing places and edges, places where the earth is little more than a reflection of the sky, or places where the sea meets the shore, forever shifting back and forth and never permanent.


Sky at Burnham Overy Staithe, by Gillian Crossley-Holland

Also on show will be some of Gillian’s recent still life drawings of spring flowers; pots of primroses, jugs of wallflowers and vases of tulips all worked swiftly in bright colours and vivid marks. These drawings provide a strong visual contrast to her landscapes and seascapes, but the subject matter still explores her fascination with the fragility of permanence.


Buttercups, by Gillian Crossley-Holland

This special exhibition at Longs Farm is open to the public during the Spring Bank Holiday weekend of 3rd, 4th, 5th May 2014 (Saturday to Monday), from 11am to 5pm.

Longs Farm
Millway Lane
Palgrave
Diss

IP22 1AD

Parking is available at the entrance to the farmhouse. Please note, due to the age and structure of the building, disabled access will be restricted.

Suffolk Open Studios takes place over four weekends: 7/8th, 14/15th, 21/22nd and 28/29th June 2014. Please visit the Suffolk Open Studios website for individual opening times of artists’ studios.

Alison Jones : botanical paintings

Alison Jones has been a member of Artworks since it began in the year 2000. She has contributed to the annual Artworks exhibitions with botanical paintings in watercolours and ‘still life’ in pastels. 
Hellibore ‘Cinnamon Snow’ © Alison Jones

Alison Jones has also exhibited at the Royal Horticultural Society. In 1990 and 1993 Alison Jones was awarded the prestigious Grenfell Silver medal at the Royal Horticultural Society’s annual exhibition for her exhibitions of fuchsias and cyclamen coum – and she has also been awarded the Grenfell Silver-Gilt medal twice, in 2000 and 2008.
Alison Jones has also exhibited at the Society of Botanical Artists in London, and is also a member of the Society of Floral Painters, exhibiting annually in the South of England. You can see more of Alison’s botanical paintings on Alison Jones profile page.
In August 2010 Alison joined twenty three other flower painters who had their first exhibition in the Edmund Gallery in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. Following its success the Iceni Botanical Artists was born in October the same year, with aims of encouraging and practising a high standard of all forms of botanical art through annual exhibitions by members.  
The Iceni Botanical Artists (IBA) is now engaged in a unique project to record and document the rarest of Norfolk’s Breckland wild flowers.  The collection of original paintings will be available for exhibitions at different venues and will be included in a Florilegium of wild Breckland Plants. More news nearer the time.
Meanwhile, the The Iceni Botanical Artists will be exhibiting again at the Edmund Gallery from 3rd – 8th August, 2012.
The Iceni Botanical Artists
3rd – 8th August 2012
Bury St Edmunds
Suffolk
IP33 1LS