Sue Archer
My interests are very diverse. I enjoy things; hand stitching, printmaking, wire-work, bookmaking and recycling. I started with textiles - exploring its potential - stitching, manipulating reusing, enjoying its properties. Another layer to my work is printing especially collagraphs. It is an extension of the techniques I use when stitching or bookmaking.
Originally I couched wire onto my fabric pieces then gradually the wire became the work. Recycling using various items/fabrics that I have around the house interests me greatly - to give things another purpose- exploiting their previous life. As you can see my interests are quite eclectic. I enjoy experimenting and trying new things.
Jane Chinea
Jane’s work has evolved through her personal investigation into the allure of natural form, real and imagined, obvious and ambiguous. Jane’s current work ranges from the descriptive to the surreal, creating ambiguity and duality of readings. Completely unique and unusual hybrid drawings are created which rely on the viewer’s responses to fragility, vulnerability, beauty and of course the capacity to look beyond initial perceptions.
Being a multi-disciplinary artist, using both traditional and modern techniques Jane has exhibited to high acclaim a diverse variety of work using varied media, involving drawing, painting, sculpture, print, book art, installation and photography. She has work in private collections in both Europe and South America and currently sells commercial work in the UK and Germany.
Jane Copeman
Landscape is a powerful container of personal experience.
The work I produce is a direct, and intuitive response to the ephemera I collect and the Photographs I take when out walking in the countryside around my home. I am reflecting on absences and presences, loss and recovery, on minute details in nature that 'catch my eye', and are on the point of disappearance.
Using Photography, Etching, Screen Print and Sculpture, I try to make images that have a tactile quality, yet create spatial ambiguities, that disorientate and disrupt, that provoke an emotional and meditative response in the viewer's psyche. Very often it is the organic materials themselves that make the work.
Judith Ferns
My current work is related to basketmaking and inspired by feelings of shelter and containment. I like the way a two dimensional material is transformed into a three dimensional object, and particularly how thoughts, words and ideas can be integrated into the material and hidden within the work.
Val Jackson
My work is a study of the function of clothes and accessories in memory. These things are visual evidence of where and what we are in life at any given time. I use free-machine embroidery to produce interesting and varied surfaces. My work is devised from multiple layers of distressed and recycled silk, interspersed with fragments of metallic gauzes and tissues, scraps of gold net, and pieces from my collection of fabrics from different eras in my life. I utilise controlled wear and distressing to reveal glimpses of this variety of colours, patterns, and texture, and to mirror the wear which blurs and alters our perceptions of the past. Use of sketching and the study of garments from a range of times are important to my work.
Rachel James
Allison John
I am a Printmaker based in the North West of England. My work includes many different aspects of Printmaking, including Linocut, Woodcut, Rhenalon Etching, Monoprint and Collograph. I am interested in how even the smallest events in our lives have significance and consequences, for as Michael Cunningham says
" There are no insignificant people, objects or events, only insufficient ways of looking at them" *
What we are is shaped by the day-to-day small things that create the world within which we live. Everyone's experiences and memories are different and this makes each one of us unique. This current work explores through Collograph and Encaustic, the daily world within which I live. Those spaces, both physical and psychological, that I occupy and which have an influence on the way I see and experience things. They are not just about the physicality of spaces, people, or the events themselves, but about the way they impact on me, both visually and emotionally. These ideas are combined within the prints with images of the natural world, emphasising my place within the order of things, within the 'bigger picture' and the significance that this has for me.
*Michael Cunningham. Specimen Days. 2005. publ. Harper Perennia
Owen Anthony Jones
I taught Art & Design at Secondary school level and was Head of a Creative Arts Faculty. I have now retired and am developing my own visual imagery based on Mixed Media and Printmaking. I am presently involved with research with the University of Liverpool into laser cutting plates for etching. I work from my own studio and at the Regional Print centre, Yale College, Wrexham. My work is based on the landscape around where I live on the border between England & Wales which I explore using my recumbent trike. I am also a fully qualified Shiatsu therapist.
Cliff Richards
I am a visual artist interested in the natural world. I am interested in exploratory printing techniques building on my improving knowledge of dry point and relief printing.
My practice is based on drawing. I draw from my natural locality trying to immerse myself to be enclosed.
Prints develop from the drawings or from direct markmaking from natural pigments and contact with the natural environment.
Cathy Rounthwaite
With a background in textiles and a degree in embroidery my work is often concerned with the physical engagement with materials. This has developed as three dimensional sculptural forms and handmade books. I am currently exploring print as a medium, working with relief print: referencing woodblock illustrations in cautionary tales, collagraphs: building up textures and surfaces to create atmosphere and reference environment, and more recently experimenting with non-toxic etching. My work is engaged with tradition and narrative and with the impact of English folklore on modern culture.
Maria Tarn
A lifetime passion for art and crafts in Education motivated me to turn my hobby into a commercial activity. I gained an MA in Education and professional Development at MMU in 2000. Since completing my City and Guilds Qualification in Textiles, Design and Embroidery, I have worked with the TX Group of artists in Frodsham, Cheshire, developing skills in the creative use of free style machine embroidery techniques. I joined the Markmakers group in 2009.
Initially my photographs or sketches of places visited are interpreted to form the basis of a range of textile work which I have successfully displayed in local galleries over the last five years. If an image can be drawn or captured digitally it can be interpreted using the sewing machine as drawing tool on canvas. I use digital images transferred onto fabrics and photo collage as backgrounds in my pictures. Working in these digitally enhanced images and textiles offers opportunities to bring together the rich diversity of texture, colour, depth and energy inherent in textiles. My materials are usually canvas, papers, ribbons, braids, sheers and a range of machine sewing threads.
When not actively engaged in my own textile work I am able to offer workshops to support others in their pursuits and hobbies. Workshops presented by myself on art techniques were well received at the Cheshire WestDeputy Head and Head teachers’ Conferences. The staff in a local nursery were very interested in developing art skills with young children in preparation for Christmas based on my workshop. I have delivered workshops on design development and textiles at Reaseheath College for the summer Downtime courses.
