For summer 2024 we bring you an exhibition of works in bold and beautiful palettes, a curated collection of vivid artworks in paint, print, clay and stainless steel. Bringing together leading contemporary artists from Edinburgh to East Sussex, to the coast of Northern Ireland and down to St Ives on the western edge of Cornwall, this collection shows how artists in diverse locations, working with diverse mediums, are using the power of colour to challenge and inspire us.

For some, colour is a medium with which to enhance line and form; for others, it is an expressive language, an emotive tool that connects the viewer with places, ideas and innate instincts; others still use colour as a vehicle for the expression of complex shapes and geometries, as a delineating tool that suggests structure, depth and space. However artists work with colour, differing palettes exert powerfully different influences on our instinctive and even our intellectual response to works of art in all their forms.

Scottish Printmaker Paul Furneaux RSA makes work using traditional Japanese woodblock printing techniques. Paul first studied woodblock printing, also known as mokuhanga, during a scholarship at Tama Art University in Tokyo in 1996. In 2003 he took up a residency at the Center for Contemporary Printmaking in Connecticut, USA where he began a series based on gardens, both Japanese sand-raked and stone gardens, and the floral gardens in Edinburgh. A visit to Norway in 2007 resulted in a highly acclaimed Fjord series, and more recently a new period of work has seen him travel back to Japan to attend international symposiums and to take up a residency on the edge of Mount Fuji with five other international artists. Paul’s interest in the landscape and his concerns for our environment are subtle but ongoing themes in his work. His practice aims to strike the balance between the limitless possibilities of his materials and an intuitive approach to creating abstract works of art, by combining the controlled cutting typical of many Japanese printers, with a more expressive style more commonly associated with woodcut in the west. Paul Furneaux graduated with BA Honours in Drawing and Painting and later a Postgraduate Diploma with Distinction from Edinburgh College of Art. His is an elected professional member of the Society of Scottish Artists, and his work is exhibited and held in collections around the world.

Anthony Garratt’s experimental paintings of wild landscapes such as Dartmoor and the South West coastline are designed to inspire an emotional connection with the imagery he creates. His works explore ideas of aloneness, encounters with the sublime, and the innate power of the world’s remote natural landscapes. By way of a strong colour palette and the dramatic use of light and dark, he skillfully communicates the thrill of isolation in lonely, bleak and unforgiving places. Anthony Garratt studied at Chelsea College of Art and graduated with a BA Honours from Falmouth College of Art. In 2014 he became a tutor at Newlyn School of Art In Cornwall, and in 2019 he established ‘Cawston Garratt’, a collaborative project which combines the processes of painting and photography. He is also a member of the Wilderness Art Collective and runs workshops that encourage a creative relationship with environmental issues. Alongside his painting he regularly conceives and produces large scale, self-initiated public art installations inspired by his passion for collaboration and for offering audiences the opportunity to encounter site specific artworks outdoors. He has exhibited extensively, including 18 solo shows to date, and his paintings are held in private and corporate collections internationally. 

Michelle Griffiths studied painting and printmaking in Brighton. Through a combination of drawing, painting and printing she creates brightly coloured but balanced compositions built of a complexity of layers. Her work is process led, made in ‘conversation’ with her materials and the progressive act of making. In this way, shapes emerge, disappear and re-emerge, so that in the final work they may have vanished altogether or become only traces. Since 1989 Michelle has focused on small format artworks frequently, and most years have seen the production of new images and editions of her miniatures which have been included in numerous mini print exhibitions throughout the world. Since the 1970s she has also shown larger scale prints in numerous international biennales, as has continuously exhibited in solo, mixed and group exhibitions featuring her drawings, paintings and prints. Michelle has exhibited at print biennales in Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Holland and her work is included in public collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum, Arts Council England, Varna in Bulgaria and the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. She is a member of the Printmakers Council and Vice President of the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers.

Mark Godwin’s work is defined by a powerful use of colour and a talent for complex compositions, often on a large scale. Combining his skill as a printmaker with his passion for painting and collage, Mark’s practice is firmly rooted in landscape and explores the philosophical and art historical concept of ‘the sublime’, the overwhelming beauty and power of nature. Collective memory, imagination, emotion, nostalgia, timelessness, the poetic idea of landscape and our innate longing for an emotional encounter with the grandeur of nature are ongoing themes in his imagery. His paintings are built up in a considered way with successive overlays of painting and mark the borderline between representation and abstraction, between the physical materiality and illusionistic quality of paint. Mark studied at the Central School of Art in London and graduated from the Royal College of Art with an MA in Printmaking. He exhibits regularly in the UK and abroad, and his work is included in numerus private collections worldwide.

Ceramicist Sam Hall was born in West Yorkshire and now lives and works in St Ives, Cornwall. His non-functional ceramics bring art and contemporary craft together in works where surfaces become a canvas for intuitive and painterly applications of colour. Sam’s sculptural forms are made on the wheel using traditional throwing techniques, before being manipulated and flattened into cylindrical shapes which act as a picture plane for marks and details built up using a variety of slips, oxides and glazes, which are often applied many times and repeatedly fired. Using scratched and scored lines in a vivid selection of colours, he brings form and surface together to make complete and confident three-dimensional works. Sam studied at Harrogate College of Art and Design and graduated with a BA Honours in Ceramics from Loughborough College of Art and Design. His work is exhibited in the UK, Europe and USA.

Sam Shendi MRSS describes his sculptures as vibrant reflections of the human condition. Working primarily with stainless steel, aluminium and paint, Sam’s practice documents his personal experiences and memory, bridging the gap between himself and the public and inviting viewers to consider their own emotional complexities. His dazzling use of colour, from reds, lemons and violets through to blues, greens and blacks, is crucial to the emotional meaning and impact of the work, and lends each piece a playful, almost childlike quality. Sam was born in Egypt in 1975 and graduated with a First Class Degree with Honours from Helwen University of Fine Arts in Cairo in 1997, having specialised in monumental and architectural sculpture. He was winner of the FIRST@108 public art award in 2013 at the Royal British Society of Sculptors, and his sculptures are exhibited and collected around the world.

Belfast born sculptor Patricia Volk RWA FRSS studied Three-Dimensional Design at Middlesex Polytechnic and graduated with a BA in Ceramics from Bath Spa University. Her practice is based on an intuitive exploration of the immediacy of clay, using techniques from coiling to slab building to make pieces that capture a simplicity of form or line, and are then fired and finished with bright and transformative applications of acrylic paint. Placing one powerful colour against another, and one powerful form beside another, she aims to achieve a satisfying aesthetic that suggests the contradictions of strength and fragility, stability and precariousness, resulting in works that she describes as “purely visual and non-intellectual”. Since 2008, Patricia Volk has exhibited her colourful sculptures in galleries and museums across the United Kingdom. Her artworks feature in private collections, such as that of the writer Anthony Horowitz and that of the politician Lord Carrington, as well as public collections such as the Swindon Museum and Art Gallery. Her work has been featured in numerous publications and in 2020 it was included in the book “50 Women Sculptors”, alongside famous artists like Camille Claudel, Barbara Hepworth, Niki de Saint Phalle and Louise Bourgeois. Patricia is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Sculptors (FRSS), and an Academician of the Royal West of England Academy (RWA).