Chichester exhibition - "landscapes, memory and the people who pass through them"

Kathryn said: “I invited fellow artists whose work I admire to join me for this exhibition. Though we each work in different mediums and distinct styles, our work shares the same resonance and qualities. We each look to the landscape to explore themes of memory, place, people and the marks and traces remaining, both human and those carved by nature.

Each artist explores the themes of the exhibition through their own specialist craft.

All our work is connected by the elemental, nature, texture, surface, people and place, a response to the contrasts and shifts within the landscape. The traces of both human and environmental change are found through the marks that reside in the surfaces, people and landscapes we admire.

“Having accepted that there is never going to be a right moment in which to exhibit my work, that, as a practicing artist, it will never be ready, I finally took the opportunity that exhibiting at the Oxmarket Contemporary offered. The theme Resonance, around which the exhibition is framed, is an important one to me. The landscapes we pass through, the people we encounter, the traces of past and present that reside within it, both human and environmental, have a huge impact on my work.

“Mark making is the common thread through all our work, each mark created from the tools and techniques that each of us use, that have been developed and honed through many years of experience. The materials we use respond in different ways to the techniques employed. Materials derive from the land, each of us crafting resonance and making marks in wood, metal, clay, textiles and paper, using our knowledge to shape, form, dye, print, paint, fire and sculpt.

“When people visit our exhibition, we would like them to experience a connection to the things they see; for them to resonate on some level, bringing recognition, pleasure, reflection and hopefully joy. The work in the exhibition reflects the way we feel towards landscapes, memory and the people who pass through them. We hope their experience of the exhibition will allow them to view these things with a fresh perspective the next time they find themselves in these environments.”

Kathryn is a textile artist and tutor, specialising in dye and print processes to create organic, layered and textural art textile pieces for exhibition, in addition to capsule collections of wearable art and interior accessories. The landscape provides a constant and enduring inspiration to which she returns time and again. Using it to explore her feelings and connection to these places and the memories and traces that reside there.

Samantha English works with both precious and non-precious metals to create vessels, landscapes, and sculptures. She employs techniques such as etching, patination, and hand-applying silver to imbue her work with marks and colour. Through her process, Samantha seeks to capture fragments, sensations, or fleeting feelings of memory, delving into the interplay of their light and darkness.

Frances Marr is a ceramicist and printmaker drawn to found objects – the colours, textures and forms, but also the awareness of time, change and decay, and the continuing life of materials that may have fallen out of human use.

Anne Hayward is a wood engraver and artist. At the heart of her work lies a practice of closely observed drawing. Through cutting into lino or intricate incising into dense fruitwoods, she translates everyday scenes into a vocabulary of fluent mark-making.

Anne has worked full time as an artist for more than 30 years, making these particular methods of relief printmaking her own, alongside her painting, which allows greater expression through colour.

Richard Hayward is a sculptor who pulls the focus of the Arts and Crafts movement into the 21st century. With its clean proportions, sweeping curves and rhythmical planes, Richard uses subject matter drawn from nature and the human form. Richard has fulfilled secular commissions for, amongst others, the Hampshire Buildings Preservation Trust and the Nautical Institute, Lymington and completed church commissions including a carved figure of Christ for Purley Parish Church, Surrey and stone heads for St Peter’s Church, Bishop’s Waltham.