I am incredibly excited to be given the opportunity to show Ben’s work only 5 miles from his studio – large or small it is stunningly beutiful.

Having originally trained in Applied Architectural Stonework and Conservation at Weymouth College in Dorset Ben went on to continue his training in Historic/Architectural Stone Carving at City and Guilds of London Art School. Over the following years he was lucky enough to work upon buildings, monuments and locations such as Highgate Cemetery, Kew Palace, The Tower of London, The National Portrait Gallery, The Albert Memorial and The Houses of Parliament to name a few. Commissions during this period included a grotesque for St Georges Chapel, Windsor Castle, two large relief carvings for County Hall London and a commemorative plaque for Goodenough College unveiled by The Queen. He received a number of awards whilst training and received a Duke of Gloucester for his carving work within the industry in 2013.

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Jess is an inspiration to anyone who wants a change.  Always creative she did not actually start painting until she was 40. She has now completed a course at Heatherleigh school of Art and is exhibiting work in galleries throughout the country.

Based between Dorset and London Jess travels widely and loves the wide open spaces and big skies of the Outer Hebrides, and the North Dorset Downs. She is drawn to colour which she masters with brilliance and her eye brings a simplified abstraction too many of her subjects.

Studying art at the Byam Shaw School of Art and City of Guilds School for Arts – Boos work is exhibited throughout the country and is held in numerous collections.

Boos work reflects her daily walks around the beautiful dorset coastline and hills were she has lived for the past twenty years.   She uses the changing light, the shapes and lines of the landscape to create pieces that reflect the strong sense of place in which she lives.  Using her memories she intuitively recalls her experience exploring colour and abstraction moving between her imagination and the reality she remembers.

I first saw Colleens work at an art fair where the energy and vibrancy engulfed the narrow aisle – I knew immediately I wanted to see more. I am delighted that Colleen has agreed to exhibit at Art at Home, a long way from her Yorkshire base and hope that everyone else will enjoy her gorgeous colour palettes and energetic canvases.

An accomplished artist. Colleen paints sea, landscapes and still life, her work is bold and cheerful and captures the essence of the places and things she paints.

Her works begin as sketches in the landscapes she adores and she uses these sketches as reference for the finished paintings when back in her studio. She works with charcoal, acrylic, pen, ink and oil often combines them all in the same painting and on a variety of surfaces including paper, board and canvas.

When the weather is not kind enough to sketch outside, Colleen gathers flowers and favourite things from her garden and house and draws and paints them in her studio.

Colleen also teaches mixed media painting from her studio and her students are producing some wonderful work. Colleen exhibits throughout the UK and has regular open studios in North Yorkshire where she lives. Her work has also been featured in House and Garden magazine.

Marissa Weatherhead

Marissa has exhibited widely in Europe and the UK .
She was awarded the Boise Travel Scholarship and John Minton Award and gained an MA from The Royal College of Art and a BA from The Gloucestershire College of Art and Design with 1st Class Honours in Painting.

These paintings use familiar objects to investigate space, colour, form and composition. They do not deal with direct observational representation; instead they use and concentrate on what we know about an object through knowledge and visual understanding. This approach enables me to play on visuals by flattening or fragmenting the images or simplifying them at will, pulling and pushing space and form. This evolution of the painting is evident in the build up of paint and use of mark making. By continually pushing the painting around it forms layers and textures until finally it reaches its conclusion

Belinda grew up in Scotland on the Black Isle and has a strong connection to nature, history and the maternal form.  She graduated from the Edinburgh School of Art in 1983 having been tutored by Vincent Butler.

Her work is intensely personal and tender and reflects her interest in cave art, Eskimo nomadic carvings and the tomb animals of the Egyptians and Chinese.

Michelle works in both driftwood and oils creating tow very different works.

Her driftwood pieces are fantastically detailed and painstakingly created for the purchaser to admire.

Her exuberant oils into which she adds model figures are both witty and whimsical – guaranteeing a smile whenever ones eye lingers long enough to find the figure with a broken leg or dropped ice-cream.

Informal classes and workshops in painting, drawing, printing and etching over the last ten years have helped Tricia’s change of perspective and ways of seeing, in very large part thanks to The Trenchard Studio group and the beautiful School of Painting at St Ives, Cornwall.

Graphic connection with a sheet of paper, mixing colour and mark making are central to Tricia’s enjoyment of art!

There is undoubtedly magic as well as chemistry and physics at work in making art, coupled with the innate human urge to make connections and communicate by leaving small traces of beauty and memory.

Trained as a nurse and an overseas development coordinator, travel took her to Altai Siberia, Kashmir, West and East Africa, sadly though not with a sketchbook!

She lives in a very small place in an interesting town in Somerset and is involved with community relations.

Mole lives and works in Bridport and is a huge talent working in the medium of Verre églomisé, from the French term meaning glass gilded. It is a process where the back/reverse side of the glass is gilded with gold, silver or metal leaf using a gelatin adhesive. The result is a mirror-like, reflective finish in which designs are then engraved. The technique dates back to the pre-Roman eras, but its name is derived from 18th century French decorator and art-dealer Jean-Baptise Glomy(1711–1786) who is responsible for its re-popularization.

Living on a rural property on the Hay plains, Sarah lives with her husband Richard, young daughter Skye, younger son Henry and twins Tom and Sophie.

Sarah loved art all through her schooling career, experimenting with a number of mediums, and later preferring acrylic and watercolour. Keeping all things art as a hobby, Sarah emersed herself in a bachelor of Education primary degree in which she went on to teach in a wide range of schools both overseas, in the city and finally in the country.

Over the last few years, Sarah has returned to art whilst raising her young family and creating a memorable family home. She is influenced by her children, overseas trips with her husband, Richard, and country living.

Jessamy utilises a traditional medium- dip pen and India ink -in innovative and original ways, producing pieces that are inspired by the natural world around her. Having grown up on Exmoor, she has recently moved to Dorset where living on the Jurassic coast, she has focused on producing artwork that champions her love for the sea – from mesmerising fish mandalas to more abstract & fluid alcohol ink pieces. Jessamy is motivated to explore the patterns & scenes found in nature and coastal life and this is reflected in the varied style of her artworks.

Maria was born in Croydon, London in 1985 but has subsequently lived the West Country for most of her life. She obtained a degree in Fine Art, Painting from the University of Plymouth (in Exeter) in 2007. She mostly paints outdoors ‘en plein air’ and seeks impressionistic portrayal of light and colour; she also enjoys the occasional still-life in the studio when the weather is against her. Maria has exhibited with the South West Academy, the Royal Institute of Oil painters, the Chelsea Art Society and the New English Art Club among others and recently exhibited at Capturing the Moment, the inaugural show of the British Plein Air Painters at the Menier Gallery, London (Oct 2018). Maria was a contestant on Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year 2018. Prizes include the Julian Barrow Award for a Painting (CaS 2017) and Windsor and Newton Young Artist 2^nd Prize (ROI 2017).

Katharine is a tremendously talented ceramicist who works from her Dorchester Studio.  She delights in the shapes and form the artist can bring to a lump of clay and uses delicate palettes to create timeless pieces for your home.

Miriam has exhibited widely around the Bath and Wells area and I am delighted that she has agreed to exhibit work this year with Art at Home. In her own words ….

I wish to capture the atmosphere of landscape and sky as I see and feel it. To me, this subject offers an endless source of inspiration. By removing references to humans or animals, my focus is on the land, the sky and the interaction between them. The transient nature of the sky and the effect it has on the land.

Of course, few landscapes are free of human influence – the fields are ploughed, planted, harvested and the hedges create boundaries. However, skies continuously change; clouds form, disperse and reform, the light either direct or indirect moves on the land. The moments before a storm, a sunset or a foggy morning have very different atmospheres and it is this diversity that I find endlessly fascinating.

My paintings all start as simple sketches, from observation. I then develop various studies before starting on what I hope to be finished paintings. Working this way allows me to really explore a subject and if it really appeals I often work on a series based on a theme.

Sarah is not exhibiting at Art at Home 2019

Sara trained under Ken Hughes, a pupil of Henry Moore, at Bath Academy of Art graduating with a First Class Honours degree in sculpture and printmaking. Between 1980 and 1982 she was awarded the Henry Moore Foundation Scholarship, the Gane Travelling Scholarship and won the Irish Distillers Merit Award.

Working in a variety of scales, commissions have included public sculptures for The Royal Hampshire Regiment at the National Memorial Arboretum Staffordshire and Khandahar Developments for Droitwich Spa. Other commissions include pieces for Volkswagen, the Nordic Swimming Federation and the iconic “Spirit of Flight” sculpture for the O A G ‘Airline of the Year Awards’.

Bjork is not exhibiting at Art at home 2019.

Björk Haraldsdóttir is an Icelandic Artist and Architect living and working in West Dorset. She graduated with Masters in Architecture from The Mackintosh School of Architecture (Glasgow School of Art) in 1991.Björk has worked for various high profile Architects including Richard Rogers.

In the last few years Bjork has combined Architecture with Ceramics but lately has focused exclusively on her art. Architectonic forms as well as organic, feature strongly in her work. In her pattern making, Björk takes inspiration from ancient Celtic and Viking crafts such as stitching patterns and wood-carvings.

Miranda started her artistic life with a BA in fashion at St Martin’s School of Art, London in the 1980’s. She worked in Dorset for 10 years before recently moving to Wiltshire.

Miranda’s ceramics originate by being hand coiled in white earthenware and worked until remarkably fine, a considerable amount of her work is now taken hand made for moulds at an artisan factory where it is fired and then hand painted. Self-taught she learns by her mistakes and draws influences from her many travels. Subtle yet vibrant, her works are intended to be used yet their delicacy makes them as beautiful to look at as they are to use.

It was in the mid 1980’s that Sally first had the opportunity to pursue her interest in sculpture. She joined an inspiring group in Oxford led by the late Polish Sculptor, Kostek Wojnarowski. Over the next few years she mainly modelled the human form from life including portraiture. She also studied the techniques of creating and casting sculptures. In 1995 she moved to the South West. This wonderfully varied area has rekindled her interest in other species, in particular she is interested in observing animal behaviour and depicting this in her work. The alertness of animals to predators, the creation of new life in spring and the life and death struggles played out everywhere we care to look, are subjects which now excite her interest. She tries to create a variety of habitat in her wildlife garden

She has sold extensively through private commission, galleries and major exhibitions in London, Oxford and the South of England, including the Royal West of England Academy. She produces small editions (usually 9) of works in Bronze and Bronze Resin and also one-off works in Fired Clay.

Laura has exhibited with art at Home since the beginning and continues to delight. She has learnt her craft in the ever popular studio’s of local sculptress Clare Trenchard but Laura has her own unique way of capturing her animals attributes.

Her love of animals gives her work a unique place in the home and as a busy mother of four she has no doubt looked after more than her fair share and she has certainly got to know them. This year Laura’s work has been shown in galleries and at Dorset Art Week’s.

Helen studied at Harrow College of Art, then in Shanghai with a master painter of Chinoiserie, murals and silk wallpapers and later at the Heatherley School of Fine Art, where she undertook a diploma in portraiture. More recently she has been studying painting with Atul Vohora. In 2012 she showed at The Mall Galleries at the Royal Society of Portrait painter’s Annual Exhibition and in 2013 she exhibited at the King’s Place Gallery in the Ruth Borchard Self-Portrait Competition. This year her work was included in the Royal Institute of Oil Painters exhibition at the Mall Galleries.

Between 1988 and 1998 she lived in the Far East, travelling extensively throughout the area, sketching and painting in Laos, Burma, Mongolia, Vietnam and china, where she developed her passion for colour, light, shape and nature. Her clients included the Mandarin Oriental hotels in Hong Kong and Shanghai and Bangkok.

She currently lives in Somerset with her family and paints landscapes ‘en plain air’, as well as portraits.