Exhibition runs Monday 7 September – Sunday 27 September 2105, 10.00 – 17.00
Painters S.K.Stevens and Jane Reilly
Plus: from Monday 14 – Sunday 27 Jewellery by Silvana
S.K. Stevens:
I was born in Liverpool in 1963, was educated at Liverpool Girls College and went on to study Fine Art and History at ‘Liverpool Institute of Higher Education, St Katherine’s College. I returned to education in 1998 attending Goldsmiths College, London from where I obtained a Post Graduate Diploma and Masters Degree in Art Psychotherapy.
I have exhibited work across the UK since 2004 in group and solo shows and I was recently chosen to represent Knowsley and The Wirral in the Best of Merseyside Exhibition at the Conservation Centre Liverpool.
I deliberately title my works in a way that allows the viewer freedom to make the picture their own, hoping to evoke an emotional response, a memory or a feeling. The paintings have an immediacy which makes them attractive at first glance but beyond which lies an emotional depth, rich in life, intensity and complexity. The paintings are often intimate and fragile, carefully considered yet spontaneously painted. I aim to tempt the onlooker to engage with the varying colour palettes, to encourage a closer inspection, to bring the small details to life, layering of paint and marks made purely by pallete knife. The seductive use of colour and texture creates a universal accessibility to the work and aims to allow everyone an experience that is personal and unique to them.
I aim to produce work that is distinctive and instinctive, that holds a rawness that is genuine, honest and never contrived. I approach each painting with a desire to capture a moment only, a fragment of time capturing an impression and emotional response that is gone almost before I have time to take it all in. There is nothing hidden in these paintings, nothing kept from the viewer about the work they see or the artist that painted them but there are many possible levels of interpretation and understanding about both.
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Jane Reilly:
I have made my home in Prescot, Liverpool with my family for the past 28 years, a solid base from which I gained a BA in Fine Art at Liverpool John Moores followed by a Post Graduate Diploma in Art Psychotherapy at Sheffield University.
I am now focusing on producing my own work where I allow ideas to freely build in an organic way until ideas are formed. Colour, texture and materials obviously play their part but it’s the history and memories that are explored through the layers of paint.
Before living in the Merseyside area I was brought up in the Cheshire countryside. It has always been my local environments that have provided the many focal points for paintings and it’s been a way of combining my industrial and rural past.
Over the years I have been able to travel to many interesting places and my paintings reflect the colours, sights and smells that I experienced. Some highlights were the frozen Canadian forests, the orchards in Slovakia and the back waters in Southern India. Walking and being outside in nature is where I feel most inspired and I look forward to continuing my journeys by foot and on canvas.
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Silvana Briers:
I design and handcraft copper and sterling silver jewellery, often quirky, always individual. I incorporate brass, glass, enamel and semi-precious stones in some designs and I have a new range using pewter which is not only jewellery, but clocks and dinky animal ornaments.
Animals have featured in quite a big part of my work recently, in all the metals I use.
I sell though a few galleries (Derbyshire, Cumbria and Warrington) and also online via Folksy, etsy, my facebook page (www.facebook.com/SilvanaJewellery) and my website (www.jewellerybysilvana.co.uk).