Blog Archives

Pitch 51: Tom Shailes

30/5/2015

Tom Shailes is an illustrator with an edge. Being influenced by the likes of Gris Grimly, Tim Burton and Skotty Young, Tom has a unique ability to draw both light and dark, combining the abstract with the tangible. Having always possessed the ability to draw,

Tom has recently becomed more focused on defining his style and technique, adapting his abilities to present to others a genre and appearance of art that is definitively his.

He has become a popular artist online and has had commissions from both local and international fans of his work, most recently, the USA. Tom will also be responsible for creating the superheroes to be used to promote this year's Maidenhead Festival.

To Contact Tom:
Email: tom.shailesart@gmail.com
Instagram: @tommy_smart87

Demonstration Street: Paula Clemente

28/5/2015

Paula Clemente is a Spanish-Brazilian born artist living in Maidenhead. A graduate of Bristol University, Paula works full-time for a local clinical research organisation and paints her psychedelic and South American inspired artworks in her spare time.

Her colourful pictures reflect the vibrancy and style of her native Salvador, Brazil combined with her love of 1960s aesthetic.

Paula will be demonstrating at Art on the Street. She will work on an original painting and ask members of the public for their opinion on which colours to use, turning the art making process into an interactive and inclusive experience.

To Contact Paula:
Email: pauliclemente@hotmail.com
Website: www.paulaclemente.co.uk

Pitch 83: Mick McNicholas

27/5/2015

Mick McNicholas is a Representational Artist, working primarily in dry media.
Originally from Liverpool, with an MA in Digital Media, Mick is largely self-taught with regards to the traditional methods of Fine Art. However, over the years he has attended various open classes, most recently at the Royal Drawing School, and now runs his own life drawing sessions as Wokingham Life-Drawing Society.

Following a successful career as a digital artist, Mick's practice led him to develop his skills in drawing originally as a way to enhance how he made digital works, but as he progressed he rediscovered his passion for creating something that is purely from within him. He now sees it as a way to express himself much more individualistically than via digital means.

Inspired by the resurgence in the atelier movement, the cornerstones of Mick's drawings are observation, and expressive mark-making. He finds drawing to be simultaneously a simple and immediate form of expression, whilst being an endlessly complex activity that discloses everyday that there is yet more to discover. It is this duality that fascinates and entices him. His philosophy is very simple; when it comes to drawing, the more you do, the more you see, the more you see, the more you're able to do!

To Contact Mick:
Email: info@mickmcnicholas.co.uk
Website: www.mickmcnicholas.co.uk

Pitch 7: Nigel Hains

25/5/2015

My name is Nigel Hains I took art at school and passed GCSE Art, with an A. But then did not paint for 40 years. I started to paint watercolour painting at Ursula Sykes evening class on a tuesday night at Littlewick green Village Hall. That was about five years ago! I paint just for fun and enjoyment!

To Contact Nigel:
Email: nigel.hains@talktalk.net

Pitch 1: Tosh Lino-Prints

23/5/2015

Within a second, a photograph is taken and send around the world. To make a lino-print, it takes time and care. The manual printing process often gives surprising results and makes every print a unique piece of art. My first lino-print, I made in school. It took ages. I cut myself a lot, wasn’t happy with the result, and blamed the lino. Many years later I saw some fabulous lino-prints and realized that it wasn’t the lino to blame. So I bought a set of sharp knives and gave it another go. I haven’t stopped since.

To Contact Tosh:
Email: tosh.lino-prints@gmx.net
Facebook: Tosh Lino-Prints

Pitch 11: Jessica Angeline Pallot

22/5/2015

My Mother, from Tucson, Arizona, met my Father, from Maidenhead, Berkshire, in Malawi in 1984. They married in Bray church, Maidenhead, 1986. My eldest sister was born in Hwange, Zimbabwe, and my second sister in Eynsham, Oxford, while my brother introduced himself to the world in Jiblah, Yemen. I finally arrived on the scene in Kandy, Sri Lanka, on October 24th 1991. After 6 years of an Idyllic childhood pushing handmade paper boats through a monsoon flooded world, my family and I packed up the travels and moved back to this small island.

The memories I hold from my childhood are tucked away in my heart but I possess the urge to physically express them. My sketch book is my travel companion. It is the tool I use to describe my distinctive encounters with the world. As my life is varied, so my work follows suit, illustrating its exciting and unexpected nature.

To Contact Jessica:
Email: japallot@gmail.com
Telephone: 07896 177896

Pitch 14: Tess Armitage

21/5/2015

Having lived on the edge of Exmoor for much of my life, I have an intimate connection with wild and untouched places. I work with an intuitive approach, exploring the paint with the use of a palette knife, scraping, splattering and scratching to create impressionistic landscapes.

I am fascinated by the division between abstraction and realism and it is this elusive place that I strive for in my work. Each painting is an experiment with gestural marks and colour themes, that evolves, I hope, into an evocative image. My aim is to reach beyond visual representation and capture the spirit of a place, so that the viewer may engage with the work and just for a moment be taken there.

To Contact Tess:
Email: tess@tessarmitage.net
Website: www.tessarmitage.net

Demonstration Street: Ian J McKillop

21/5/2015

Ian J McKillop is Director of the Art School, St Johns Beaumont, Old Windsor.

Ian began his career as a professional artist in the United States, working as a designer for two theatrical companies: ‘Best of Broadway’ in New York, and Creative International in Tampa, Florida. He was responsible for the sets for various television and theatrical productions, including ‘1776 Opera’ (Florida’s contribution to their bicentennial celebrations) and the Miss America Pageant in Bush Gardens for CBS television. As a musician, he also worked with members of Dire Straits and The Chamber Brothers, playing guitar and keyboards on their recordings in Philadelphia.

Following his return to the UK in the 1980s, Ian became resident Artistic Director for the Stowe Opera Company, together with two National Opera and Ballet companies [say which these were?]. Recently he has worked closely with principals of the English National Ballet. In addition to theatrical and television work, Ian has lectured and given workshops in some of the most prestigious art schools in the UK, helping many young art students to achieve their creative goals.

Although originally trained in Theatre Arts and Portraiture, Ian’s work has flourished to cover abstract and landscape. His expert combination of natural form on a platform of texture and colour has won him much praise. Ian has a studio in Spain where he exhibits regularly, and is about to commence work on the designs for a production of ‘Carmen’ in Valencia.

Pitch 22: Mia Dunning

20/5/2015

Mia is an enthusiastic and unique young artist who likes to push the boundaries of her own artistic abilities. After four years studying fine art at Oxford Brookes and, latterly, the University of Gloucestershire, Mia has developed a unique and arresting style in a range of media including acrylic, coloured biro and mixed media.

Over the past two years her work has been about reconstructing and making sense of various relationships within imagery. She focuses on the juxtapositions of colour and form, which have always been consistently apparent in her work. She is intrigued by distortion and ambiguity as she takes on experimental editing to her images.

Recently, Mia has made a conscious effort to reinvent her artwork. This has subsequently steered her towards her biro drawings as it adopts a nostalgic quality of her childhood diary doodles. Although her biro work tends to rely on processes similar to that of chromatography for effect, her intriguing imagery and playful, synthetic colour take on a celestial aesthetic; supernovas come to mind.

Mia does not lay down a pencil outline before starting any piece of work, as she believes this creates a premeditated expectation of the work she is about to embark on. Mistakes, blotches and imperfections are just as much a part of her work as any mark she makes. This being said, her artwork has transcended itself into a form of self-therapy for Mia. The painstakingly fastidious cross-hatching requires patience, confidence and decisiveness, as well as creating a colourful distraction from reality.

To Contact Mia:
Email: melia_dunning@hotmail.co.uk

Pitch 17: Martin Bond

19/5/2015

Hello, my name is Martin Bond; I live and work in Berkshire. I am a self-taught artist, learning all the time about the infinite subject of painting. I have painted landscapes, seascapes, and animals using mediums such as oil, acrylic, watercolour and pastels.

I am quite selective about paintings I place on my walls in my own home and pretty sure other people are too. Therefore I try to create paintings that constantly interest me, I like to view day to day and therefore offering them to others to enjoy in their homes.

I have been exhibiting with Art on the Street for a few years now, I have been fortunate to find homes for paintings at each of the events. I have exhibited at my local Burnham Library and Maidenhead Library along with fellow Maidenhead Painting Club (MPC) members. An exhibition at Elizabeth House in Cookham resulted in a local doctor purchasing a Bluebell Wood scene in watercolour.

To Contact Martin:
Website: http://potlesspainting.webs.com/