Artists
Copyright for all images remains with the artist (please note that some images may appear slightly cropped).
Martin James Bushell
Martin is a sculptor from Hatfield having studied at the University of Hertfordshire. His current practice is centred around making maquettes with the specific goal of upscaling them for a public space in Hertfordshire having been inspired by the surreal public sculpture of France.
Brian Cooke
Brian Cooke (ARPS, AFIAP) is a landscape, seascape and flower photographer. He specializes in local scenes of Harpenden (where he lives) and the surrounding Hertfordshire countryside. He exhibits at local arts fairs (e.g. Art on the Common Harpenden and Ayot St Lawrence Arts Fair). He was awarded 3rd place and the RPS bronze medal at the 2022 International Garden Photographer of the Year (IGPOTY) competition.
Robin Elgar
Currently Robin explores landscapes through pen and ink studies which she develops into collage pictures or paintings, using acrylic. Shape and texture are key to her work.
Dawn Elliott
Dawn's work mainly focusses on narrative scenic paintings. She sees each of her pieces as telling it's own short story and is always fascinated to hear what the viewer sees in each of them. Dawn is a self professed 'vintage soul' and takes inspiration from bygone eras and cinematography along with many of her favourite artists.
Heather Fitz
Heather is self taught and has been painting for many years. Heather has won many awards for showing her work at local exhibitions.
Jennifer Foulds
Jennifer is an artist from Hertfordshire. She has always been drawn to the soft, atmospheric feel of loose watercolour painting, and uses relaxed and fluid strokes and a predominantly wet-into-wet technique.
www.paintpotoriginals.artweb.com Instagram: @paintpotoriginals Facebook: PaintPotOriginals
Yanyun Gao
Yanyun is a self-taught artist based in St Albans. She mainly paints in oil, watercolour and Chinese ink. Her subjects are still life, landscapes, seascapes, flowers and trees. She exhibits in Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire and London and this year she exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.
Susan James Dean
A graduate in Fine Art, Su's background is in art education and she continues to be a visiting artist in schools. Both the changing nature of the landscape and the dynamic energy of the human figure are sources of inspiration. In her paintings and drawings, Su aims for a spontaneous and expressive response through colour, line and mark.
www.hvaf.org.uk/galleries/susan-james-dean Instagram @susanjamesdean
Melanie Harvey
Melanie was born and brought up near St.Albans. She is self taught and has been painting since 2017. She works predominantly in oils, in a realistic style, whilst enjoying a wide variety of subjects; from Still Life to Wildlife, Animal Portraits to Land and Water/seascapes. She has received awards for several of her works, and exhibits in Herts/Beds/Bucks and the surrounding area. Constantly learning she enjoys the challenge of new subjects and finding new ways to achieve interesting results.
Komathy Hawkins
Sri Lankan born she learnt art from a very young age. Encouraged by her uncle who was a renowned international artist she grew up surrounded by paint and colour and studied Art to an Advanced Level at College in Jaffna. Sadly, owing to the civil conflict, she had to leave her country and with it left behind her love of art.
The years of building a new life in a new country stalled her artistic dreams but recently she has been able to find herself again. Today she is sketching and painting with a new-found freedom and Art has once again become an important part of who she is.
Now living in Hertfordshire, she specialises in portraiture, figures, and modern/contemporary styles. She works with a variety of mediums - Oil, Acrylic, water ink, charcoal - and has also studied colour and skin-tone techniques at CityLit College in London. She loves experimenting and through her work celebrates humanity and nature. She treasures the marks people make on the world – the local, the small scale, the global, the eccentric, the ordinary – but all her paintings have one thing in common. They are created out of caring.
She has exhibited at Private Exhibitions and within the local community. In 2021 one of her oil paintings – “Waiting in the Moonlight” - was selected for inclusion in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. It sold before the Exhibition opened to the public.
More recently she has been invited to tutor Portrait Painting Workshops at Letchworth College and is now starting to hold her own private tutor groups. She also undertakes portrait commissions.
Anne Hignell
Anne’s paintings are impressionistic in style, and an intuitive, loosely based response to the world she sees around her. Her interest is often taken by a colour, or a contrast of light and shade, or perhaps a complex linear quality.
Paul Hillary
Paul Hillary was born in Carlisle, Cumbria, educated in Cumbria before studying Graphic design at Kingston University where he attained an Honours degree. Paul has always been drawn to the moods and atmospheres created by the elements on land and sea and the effect it has on colours. He has had numerous exhibitions in the home counties of England as well as Gloucestershire. While working as a Graphic Designer around London Paul has taken time out to travel extensively in Africa, Australia, America and Thailand sketching and painting on his travels. He is married to Juliet and has two boys, Joe and Reef with a support crew of Marra the Lakeland Terrier, Moose the working Cocker and Pearl the black and white cat. In his home town in Herts Paul was awarded a 22 artwork Corporate commission for a Global Pharmaceutical Company which is still on display in their HQ. Over recent years the acylics, oils and sketches have been inspired by stays on islands around the United Kingdom including the Channel Islands and the Hebrides in Scotland. His sketches are largely done on location and canvasses in his studio in Hertfordshire, England. Paul is constantly exploring with technique, colourways and texture in his art and photography, constantly capturing abstract images of old stressed skips, textures in nature and abstract colour combinations in what he sees. Themes from these observations are constantly translated onto his artworks in an abstract or semi-abstract way. He is currently working towards exhibitions of his work around London and the English Lake District in his home county of Cumbria, and has various artworks on show in open exhibitions and has sold work globally.
Rhodri Jones
Rhodri has recently been exhibiting with Hampstead School of Art at Central St Giles, Covent Garden and Allies and Morrison: Impact of Buildings, Southwark.
Judith Kelly
Judith has successfully exhibited both photographic and digital art prints at Kimpton Art Shows and at ‘Art on the Common’, Harpenden over a number of years. Using elements of her own photographs, she enjoys working with the textures, colours, scale, and landscape forms to create original landscape visions that are memories of a place. A member of the Harpenden Photographic Society, Judith holds the Royal Photographic Society Distinction of Licenciate (LRPS).
Kate Mason
Kate lives in Brookmans Park with her husband, three kids, three cats and a chicken! She loves painting with bright colours, layering paint to create contemporary landscapes, coastal and floral artwork. She creates paintings that elicit a sense of wellbeing, using colours that are evocative and aesthetically pleasing.
Miroslav Mijatovic aka JEJO ART
Miroslav Mijatovic a.k.a. JEJO ART, is an emerging visual artist based in Hitchin, Hertfordshire and an active member of Herts Visual Arts. Originally from Serbia, he arrived to the UK four years ago by way of Dubai where he first started exhibiting his work. These days you can catch him at art fairs, festivals, markets and exhibitions across Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and London. He is working across various mediums – from acrylic abstract paintings on canvas or wood of all sizes, sculptural (3D) paintings, small sculptures from old tools to home accessories and furniture such as lamps and coffee tables from upcycled materials. No two works of art are the same and each piece allows viewers to let their imagination run wild. This playfulness and vision allows him to see beyond the obvious and give new life to everyday objects – a car coil becomes a lamp, pliers become a statue of a singer, scrap wood becomes an elegant coffee table. When it comes to his paintings, whenever he picks up his tools and paints, he never know where that first stroke will take him. But one thing is for sure, his paintings are filled with colour and texture that evoke a warm feeling in everyone, regardless if they are 7 or 77.
Judith Moule
Judith is a contemporary artist, her work is inspired by the land/seascapes of Australia and New Zealand. Her work is a personal response to the visual forms, colours, texture and atmosphere of the landscape that she works in. She works intuitively to begin with usually on several pieces at the same time forming a body of work. This allows her to see what is working so that she can expand and develop her ideas and eentually form a visual dialogue. She builds several layers of paint, drawn marks and either visual or physical texture in the form of organic shapes. As the painting develops she takes a more critical aproach refining and resolving, whilst striving to keep the energy of the marks Judith would like to think that her work evokes a human experience of the land/sea rather that its physical presence, which is her offering to the viewer.
Andrew Naish
Born in Barnet and raised in Potters Bar, Andrew specialised in art at school and college taking those skills to pursue a successful career in exhibition design for both trade shows and museums. In 2010 Andrew returned to his artistic roots as a full-time artist, living and working in Luton. Andrew is fascinated by the changing built environment and aspects of that change, demolition or process frequently appear in his paintings. Often providing a social commentary on how humans interact with that environment. More traditional landscapes and cityscapes are represented in his body of work, with shapes or colours inspiring the composition chosen. He enjoys exploring analogue subjects through a digital camera lens that are returned to analogue through painting. Andrew also creates abstract works often based on previous more representational pieces. He enjoys exploring the shapes or found colours through a series of changing but connected works. His finished work is predominantly interactive acrylic on canvas. Interactive acrylic is a medium he first used in 2010 and he has continued with ever since. He particularly enjoys using their wide range of colours. Andrew has been a member of the Eagle Gallery for the last 10 years and has also won a number of awards for his paintings, including The Artist Purchase Prize Award at Patchings Open Competition in 2013.
Mandy Newman
Mandy was born in Watford and grew up in Bushey. she completed a Foundation diploma at Watford Art School (where her Course Leader was Peter Schmidt). She then studied at St Albans Art School as a student of the painter Graham Boyd. Mandy Newman graduated with a First Class Honours degree twice: once in the field of Fine Art (University of Hertfordshire 1991) and once in Creative Writing (Bucks New University, 2012) where she also won three Major Awards for "Academic Excellence" including the prestigious "Hewlett Packard-Bell's Most Inspiring Student Award". In 1992 she participated in "The National Fine Art Degree Show Fair and won a major painting prize in the New Graduate painting Competition. Her large painting "The Joint Pursuit of the Challenge of Life" , was purchased by the BBC for Television Centre, London. The judges, (who included the British artist Mary Fedden R.A. O.B.E. and whose previous pupils included David Hockney) described Mandy Newman as "A bold, big, and powerful painter". She later taught in colleges and for the Open College of the Arts at Hertfordshire University. She also has a NAFAS diploma in Floral Art and Design and has exhibited widely. Her work is held in many public and private collections.
Meggie Nikolic
Meggie is a Hertfordshire-based artist who has been creating artwork since childhood. Her preferred medium is oil on canvas. Meggie is fascinated by Nature and the different moods that can be invoked by it. Her paintings portray how she experiences the world around her; the unexpected beauty of the most simple things and the freedom to be part of it. Meggie particularly loves the Hertfordshire landscapes with their vibrant colours and dynamic skies. More recently, Meggie is increasingly painting animals, birds and insects. All of Meggie’s artwork is based on personal experiences and she exclusively paints places and creatures she has been lucky to see and admire. Meggie is currently a committee member of the St Albans Art Society (SAAS) and a member of Herts Visual Arts (HVA) and The Harpenden Art Society (HAS).
Linda Owen
Linda studied art at St Albans College of Art & Design. Initially working in oils and sculpture, then she became increasingly interested in watercolours. She has exhibited at the Society of Wildlife Artists and the Society of Women Artists at the Mall Galleries. She was Head of Art at St Hilda's Girls School. Linda has illustrated a number of children's books and designed greetings cards. She likes to bring a sense of fun into her work. At present she is working on found objects.
Gill Peplow
Gill lives locally in North Mymms. She has been attending art classes at a local college and more recently at an art gallery in Hertford. She prefers to paint in acrylics, but has recently started to use watercolour. She paints landscapes and also enjoys painting sea and water-based subjects and silhouettes from nature.
Suzanne Sive
Suzanne is a painter who lives in Northaw. She started oil painting lessons online during lockdown and is now trying different painting styles and oil techniques. She enjoys the challenge of portraiture and figurative art and takes inspiration from Post Impressionist painters.
Peter Whitehead
Peter Whitehead is a local amateur landscape and wildlife photographer who has won awards in international competitions for his work. Peter has exhibited throughout Hertfordshire and his images have featured in ‘Bird Photographer of the Year’ and the ‘British Wildlife Photography Awards’ as well as in many publications. Through photography Peter aims to highlight environmental and conversation issues by showcasing both endangered species as well as conservation success stories in the UK and elsewhere. The four images displayed in this exhibition are part of Peter’s tribute to the David Attenborough programme ‘Wild Isles’ in that they showcase a small number of the UKs distinctive landscapes and wildlife.
