Greenwich Open Studios
A lively and vibrant exhibition of works in a wide range of media from this renowned group of London artists.
Entry to membership of Greenwich Open Studios (GOS) requires a high standard of work and all its artists are professionals. The main Studios event takes place during the middle two weekends of June. Visitors get the opportunity to visit artists’ studios, often in their own homes, and to view and purchase pieces without having to pay the additional middle man price, as demanded by dealers and commercial galleries.
The Summer Open Studios is the GOS mainstay and has become part of the Greenwich summer calendar. This was recognised, for the first time this year, by a number of high profile local sponsors who agreed to support the printing of the Greenwich GOS brochure.
From time to time, Greenwich Open Studios members have exhibited collectively in local galleries, including the world famous Ranger's House on the edge of Greenwich Park. When the idea of a collective exhibition at Letchworth Arts Centre was first mooted, GOS members welcomed the opportunity to show their work outside London for the first time. Indeed, all members welcomed the opportunity given by Letchworth Arts Centre to crack open London's best kept artistic secret.
You can see examples of the work of members of the Open Studios by clicking on to the GoS website link below.
Greenwich Open Studios artists at Letchworth
Fiona Athanassaki, John Bangs, Angela Brookes, Basia Burrough, Geraldine Franklin, Sarah Garrod, Kate Honey, Carol Kenna, Maggie Learmonth, Sarah Lister, Steve Lobb, Erica Macdonald, Vanessa Mackness, Elaine Marshall, Penny Matheson, Frances Ottaway, Karen Scadeng, Maria Silva, Frances Treanor.
FIONA ATHANASSAKI'S current paintings combine various approaches and media (oil, acrylic, pastels ) and explore their interaction and contrasts. This draws on an extensive range of techniques including the traditional art of water and oil gilding. Colour is built up in glazes to create a sensation of depth and generate a layered transparency. Her subject matter is usually taken from landscape and many of her influences stem from the rich vibrant colours of the Mediterranean. Inspired by the light and how it affects and transforms surfaces, her work is semi-abstract and uses imagery of shapes, colour and texture. (right: Dragonflies)
JOHN BANGS studied Fine Art at Reading University under the tuition of Claude Rogers and Terry Frost. After gaining his degree, he completed a teaching course at Goldsmiths College and then spent a number of years teaching art and literacy in a secondary school and special school in Tower Hamlets.
John has been Head of Education for the National Union of Teachers since 1990. He works mostly in dry pastels, using colour as an expressionistic tool for recording memories of valued places and people. In this way, he views his drawings as being a form of visual diary, and cites the work of Edward Hopper, Jack Yates and Pierre Bonnard as influential in the development of his style.
John has been participating with the Greenwich Open Studios Group since 1990. He has exhibited a number of times at the annual Whitechapel Open Exhibitions and at local galleries. (see above right)
ANGELA BROOKES trained at the Central School of Art and London University. Her career as an artist has included working with ceramics whilst teaching in schools and the adult sector. Latterly she has concentrated on printmaking as her chosen artistic medium. Her work is based firmly in the natural world, whether it be landscapes, trees, bursts of light, or beautiful shells. She endeavours to capture those fleeting moments which have first attracted her.
She is fascinated by light, mood and atmosphere, where sun, rain, mist and wind all come together. Angela's work has appeared in the Royal West of England Academy, The National Theatre, the.gallery@Oxo, Liberty's, Heal's, the SWA at Mall Galleries, Greenwich Printmakers, Southbank Printmakers, Stark Gallery, and Grapevine Gallery in Norfolk, and is in private collections in the UK, Spain, Germany and the US. (above right: Creek, late evening)
BASIA BURROUGH studied Fine Art at Camberwell School of Art. After a career of teaching art, she has returned full time to her life-long love of painting. Greenwich, where she was born and brought up, the Thames and its surrounding landscape and architecture have always been part of Basia's life and have inspired her recent series of paintings.
She works in oil on canvas from her Greenwich studio and constantly returns to the river for inspiration. Basia's other main interest is the art of portrait painting. She finds that the opportunity of capturing her subject in oil on canvas gives her the chance to create more than just the likeness of a person: it is a picture about a person. She currently divides her time between her paintings of Greenwich and commissions for portraits.
SARAH GARROD is a photographer specialising in fine art prints. She prints by hand in the darkroom and uses experimental techniques such as lith printing and liquid emulsion, using black & white. Her colour work is strikingly modern and she uses collage and paint to create unique works of art. She also takes commissions as a portrait photographer. (see right)
KATE HONEY qualified in painting and stained glass at Wimbledon School of Art and later trained in the jewellery workshop of Miye Matsukata in the US. Her work explores and develops design ideas, emphasising colour and texture within an abstract form. Using mostly silver, she chooses semi-precious stones for their unusual qualities and colour; necklaces, bracelets, earring and rings, are often constructed around the stones. Each individual item is handmade and an original unique design. A few items are a limited edition, though each piece will not be quite the same as any other. (right: Silver-leaf bracelet)
CAROL KENNA'S photographs (right) provide a personal view of the world around her, influenced by artists such as Tina Modotti, Cartier-Bresson, Charles Sheeler and the Russian constructivists. Her photos reflect her interest in architecture, the River Thames on its way through Greenwich, favourite places in Woolwich, Brittany and Berlin and people as they go about their everyday activities. Her preference is for black and white photography, only last year moving into colour for a particular purpose. Carol likes the subject to do the talking in its own peculiar way.
MAGGIE LEARMONTH was born and brought up among the Cumbrian fells.She spent the first part of her career in urban education, initially as a teacher of modern languages and latterly as a teacher educator working with the Teach First programme in London. In 2003 her life took a new direction and she began to make the transition into the visual arts. She now works from her studio near the Thames Barrier and studies at the John Cass Department of Fine Art at London Metropolitan University.
Her current paintings are more often than not rooted in the memories of her native Lakeland fells where she returns from time to time to walk and to make drawings.Her work is in private collections in London, Edinburgh, Paris and New York. (above: One Walk Yellow)
SARAH LISTER regards drawing as fundamental to the language of art. Her work is the result of a continual process of investigation. This underscores her figure drawing in particular which is usually completed within a given time - however random. It is essential to connect and then experiment and correlate vital marks which will capture the essence of the human form. It is demanding and fascinating, forever changing. (see right)
STEVE LOBB studied art at Guildford School of Art and the Royal Academy Schools and has exhibited at the Alexandra Palace and the Serpentine Gallery. His pictures and constructions are painted in acrylic colours on wood panels, some on conventional rectangles, some in circles or shaped to the subject. They are about people, places and events imagined through scenes of beach, city, fairground, fire and forest. (right: Beach)
ERICA MACDONALD studied graphic design, etching and figure painting. She has taught art to adults at a MIND day centre and children at after-school art clubs. Before moving to Greenwich she worked with painters in the Weald of Kent, using either a life model in the studio, or painting sheep in the fields. She has always been interested in drawing the figure: the analysis of the structure, the atmosphere and sense of space, whether in interiors or in landscapes.
Her work has appeared in joint exhibitions, and open exhibitions including the Royal Academy summer exhibitions and the Royal Watercolour Society. (see above left)
VANESSA MACKNESS sees the act of drawing and painting as the act of connecting with the world. She hopes her working process will open up pathways which lie unsuspected in the human heart, pathways of dialogue and abstract understanding far removed from the realm of words. For her this process becomes complete when she shares her findings with the receptive viewer. (see right: pastel)
ELAINE MARSHALL studied painting at Goldsmiths' and the Slade Schools of Art, and more recently gained a BA Hons Degree in Book Arts from the London Institute. At her studio in Greenwich Elaine works in several printmaking techniques. As well as etchings of mainly landscape subjects, her acquisition of an Albion relief press has inspired a series of colour lino cuts of the patterns of mazes and labyrinths, and imaginary butterflies and insects. Inspiration has also come from travels abroad: Tuscany,Andalusia, Morocco and Nepal.
Elaine is a founder member and manager of Greenwich Printmakers Gallery.
(below: Summer Fox. linocut)
PENNY MATHESON, a recent MA graduate from Central St Martins, has a very varied art practice. In the past few years, her work has encompassed sculptures and photographs of motor cycle helmets and aeroplanes, text and digital pieces telling people’s stories, and more traditional watercolour paintings and silk-screen prints featuring in particular crows and chickens, West Country landscapes and kitchen paintings of fruit and vegetable. (right: Catalogue Image 2)
FRANCES OTTAWAY took up photography following an inspirational trip to the Lake District in 1988, while enjoying a successful career at the BBC. Largely self-taught, she has developed a personal style involving close up work and the abstraction of her subject matter. Focusing on both the natural and manmade environment she frequently plays with the viewer's perception of distance and scale creating arresting and intriguing images. (above: Docklands)
KAREN SCADENG'S works reflect her physical and emotional response to the countryside and to industrial and historic Greenwich where she lives. Her paintings have a free and expressionistic quality, they reveal the ever-changing River Thames ebbing and flowing along the wharves and the light of the meridian line shining out as dusk begins to fall.
All imagery is of the moment. It is gathered outside while walking with a sketch pad, feeling the blowing of the wind, the chill or warmth in the air, watching the landscape as light and the weather change throughout the day and then into night. Karen spreads large areas of paper on rough ground, drawing and painting with ink using reed pens that she cuts from growing reed beds. The paper often can be blowing in the wind, tear and even have rain shower the paper. These images are later worked into etching plates. (right: Meditation Tree)
MARIA B SILVA is a painter and contemporary jewellery designer, born in Chile and based and working in the south of London. She has a BA in Education from the University of Chile, studied Arts, Design and Language at Goldsmiths College in London, and has a BA in Silversmithing, Goldsmithing and Jewellery Design from the Kent Institute of Arts and Design (KIAD). She has a studio in South London and has exhibited at various venues in Britain and Chile.
She draws her inspiration from Pre-Columbian ancient civilizations and the richness of colour and light in nature and the environment. Some of her paintings reflect her interest in nature, colour and light and others are linked to the environment and are inspired by the rugged and barren landscape of the Atacama Desert in the north of Chile and Patagonia in the extreme south. (above right: Four Elements. mixed media)
FRANCES TREANOR, a graduate of London (Goldsmiths) and Middlesex (Hornsey) universities, made the decision to quit her teaching and lecturing career in order to concentrate full time on her painting commissions and publishing work.
She is known mainly for her vibrant, expressionistic flower paintings in pastel but has moved away gradually through using acrylic, and paper collage, towards larger urban and rural landscape, depicting buildings, not in a predictable, sombre, topographical manner, but with emphasis on quirky peculiarities.
Frances was selected first Artist-in-Residence, Greenwich Royal Park, 2005, and was nominated by the Editors of the American Biographical Institute woman of the Year 2006. Her book Vibrant Flower Painting is available from libraries and direct from the artist. (see above right)
Solo exhibitions:
2006 THE STEPHEN LAWRENCE GALLERY, London SE10;
2004 Invited solo artist, KSB LAW SOLICITORS, Fetters Lane London WC1;
1998 Flora and Erotica, Artifex Gallery, Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands.
