Member Artists

My intrinsic connection with the natural world initiates my concept for my art practice by way of my living and working on a small farm in Suffolk and being aware of the seasonal changes and how the pattern of these changes alter each year. I explore ways to engage my public with materials taken from or relating to the rural wilderness. I call my practice drawing but this can be on paper, wood, bark, cloth. I work in 2D and 3D, and my subject registers the environment in which I work. Through experimenting with collected soils and flora, and finding ways to draw and paint with them, and also using bark, coppiced and cordwoods as a canvas I make and use these discoveries to connect with my subject.

My art is a natural progression of ideas, informed from my inner and outer landscapes. I am interested in how my intuition transposes thoughts into a visual format and how the collection of marks and materials become the sum of their parts. I make my own charcoal and collect soils to use for pigments. My argument continues to be that man has a creative spirit with a need to make traces. www.ruthrichmond.com

Jim initially studied bronze casting at the RCA in London on the foundry route under Richard Rome, he taught bronze as a visiting tutor at Cardiff school of art and demonstrated mould making at Wimbledon. For many years he tutored at the Hong Kong bronze studio and is now working at Butley Mills Studios, Suffolk.

“i make two kinds of work: one is an attempt on the sublime in sculpture, which is normally the preserve of painting. to this effect, the Monumenty, Tang and Bird Alphabet series are about placing the human artefact in nature, within the landscape where it can command the pictorial, bring sky to earth and earth to sky. they are seeking an ideal for civilised aspirations and the extraordinary: Monumenties like Angelic and Caryatid are a monument to an unstated future happening. Monumenty is very likely to survive the species which made it. the Tangs are compositional exercises inspired by ancient bronze, the Bird Alphabet is an attempt to create a sculptural written language for birds, to create a meta-alien language and so rewrite the basis for sculptural expression and create entirely new art. my other work is for the contemporary fringe, where the Aherm and Bad Painter series can let off steam, tell collectors where to get off,  push rodin over and make fun of oneself, the art world and pretty much anything worth kicking fair and square on the arse. the art comes first.”

Website: https://hkbronzestudio.wixsite.com/jim-racine-bronzes

I have made work about landscape for many years, much of it photographic. The Suffolk environment and landscape is a part of my life as I have lived in Suffolk for almost forty years. However, I am interested in a critical exploration of landscape and how it is physically shaped by human activity and how our perception of it is shaped by cultural practice.

Until retirement, three years ago, I was employed in advice work and before that in adult education. My skills include working with adults in community, formal and informal settings and I have collaborated with the dancer, Mel Horwood in several projects where we explored the relationship between drawing and dance.

I am particularly interested in the ways representation interrelates with our experience of the world, how we can look through the representation at the world and therefore how images can make us look at things differently.

I am a sculptor who finds inspiration in the natural world. My work aims to extract the essence of a creature. I try not to create a realistic image, but rather to capture the feeling, movements and appearance of a bird, animal or insect. A moment in time in their life. One of my main themes this year has been herons – which I was going to pursue at Sculpture in the Valley.  I have created a heron sculpture from a Bewick print of a heron and another one based on Egyptian paintings of herons, I’ve still got a couple more in me!

You can find more of Elizabeth’s work on her Instagram account @elizabeth.cooke.artist

Scribbly Roo is an illustrator and graphic designer. She channels her love of colour and pattern into multi-layered mixed media pieces, exploring themes of narrative and symbolism. In addition to traditional media, she also creates digital illustrations using an iPad. See more of her work at  www.scribblyroo.co.uk and on Instagram @scribblyroostudios.

I founded Nutmeg Puppet Co in 1979 and with a group of actors, theatre directors and writers, composers, musicians and visual artists have produced shows for schools, small theatres and festivals since then. I have also trained young makers and performers on the job. We worked for the Broads Authority for over 20 years, making and touring puppet shows based on considerable research and inspired by the ecology, plants, animals, social history, and folk tales of the Norfolk and Suffolk Broads.  We also specialise in shadow puppetry, running workshops and making shows for adults and children. I make short films (Spooky Folk) and have taught animation (The Sound of Wangford). With Jenny Nutbeam I have made textile hangings for environmental organisations.  I work with natural materials, leading family workshops to make puppet characters – animals, people, mysterious beings – and more recently creating installations (Waveney River Sculpture Trail, Craftco window, Southwold). A strong focus of my work has always been to try to re-engage people with the natural world, and to encourage children and adults to make things well using proper hand-tools. I teach the same methods as I use in my own installations.

http://nutmegpuppet.co.uk

facebook @nutmegpuppetco

twitter @NutmegPuppetCo

Art Photographer – environmental and experimental

Veronica explores environmental art using her camera to capture movement, time and natural processes. Her expressionistic images define her concern for the natural world and the current rate of degradation.

Read Love Dandelions, an article by Veronica featured in online photography magazine On Landscape.

I am a self taught 3D artist using found materials – wood, metal, plastic – to create both figurative and abstract pieces mainly for outdoor/garden locations but also small pieces for indoor display.  I refer to myself as a “creative bodger” and am more interested in the original idea and process rather than the ‘finish’ of a piece.  I have been making ‘objéts’ since the late 60s, having been fired up by an Antony Caro exhibition of painted steel works at the Hayward Gallery, London.  I collect discarded objects from skips and such like, and it may take several years before seeing something stimulates me to begin the creative process.

Music, remote, wild places are at the heart of Ruth’s creativity. Working in oils, watercolour, and collage, Ruth welcomes visitors to her studio in Wenhaston, by arrangement, and during Suffolk open studios in June.

Website

I use images of the many places I have visited and lived, Suffolk being recent and current.
The fascination of this landscape of marshes, muddy estuaries and beaches of pebble,
grasses and shingle, provides an endless source of inspiration.

With the right atmospherics, anything and everything can reflect a powerful beauty – from a sunset or a mountain, coastlines, fields and islands, to a moody thunderstorm at sea.

My recent paintings are very much about a sense of place and weather, and painterly
concerns such as texture, colour, shape and surface. I have not attempted accurately to
record or recreate, but to evoke the landscape of the real, remembered and imagined.
While the experiences are autobiographical, the images I make are carefully mediated
memories of the many and varied landscapes through which my life has passed.

These paintings of unpopulated places have an emotional charge. As an artist I choose and
edit the scenes, setting the stage for viewers to bring their imagination and private meaning
to these places, and wanting the painting to evolve its own life and meaning. Different
places in the landscape trigger memories of a shared past: the paintings are also enquiries
into unfamiliar spaces and attempt to create something unpredictable, beyond the subject.

www.hilarybarryartist.com