Tamsin O'Sullivan

Tamsin is a self-taught mixed media artist focussing mainly on paintings, collages and altered art. She mainly works in acrylic with a mixture of vintage and recycled items. She uses a variety of materials including glitter, jewellery, keys, buttons, mirrors, ribbons and lace. She collects her materials from auctions, charity shops and craft stores. She is inspired by anything vintage and retro, tattoo art and pinup art. At the moment she is mainly making small paintings using copies of vintage photos of women from the Edwardian and Victorian eras.

Vincent McGrath

Vincent is a designer maker from Nottinghamshire with over 12 years experience in the stone masonry and granite trade, having graduated with a B.A. Hons degree an Industrial design in 2001. Vincent’s company, 1-Limited edition provides unique, one-off pieces of art from a select choice of high quality recycled materials, emphasising the use of natural resources that will last a lifetime thus providing an environmentally friendly and sustainable product.

1-limited edition website

Eireann Lorsung

Eireann makes prints, drawings, dioramas and paper constructions as a way of understanding the world around her and her relation ship to it and to the people she meets, using repeated symbols to represent these places, people and herself. Understandably, therefore, the work she makes can feel very personal. She tends to work on a small scale (partially because she’s been moving from place to place for the past few years), which lends a feeling of intimacy to the work. The media she is currently working in are etching and gouache/watercolours. She makes prints at the Leicester Print Workshop, and at the moment she is particularly interested in exploring the possibilities of chine collee for her prints.

Cecilia Davies

Cecilia has been exploring ideas of how global warming could impact our lives through an instant freeze. This project was inspired by the work done by the artists of the Cape Farewell project, who are trying to raise the public’s awareness to climate change through different forms of art media. The materials Cecilia has used to create her sculptures are paraffin wax, blue wax dye, various pieces of domestic furniture, and objects used around the home, mostly recycled. Wax is used to represent ice and snow textures: it bends and moves on its own like a frozen environment and it seems to gives her sculptures the sense of fragility. The furniture is used so people could relate to the objects and to create a sense of loss of the things we take for granted.

Sam Clift

The traditional adaptability of materials such as carpet and their presence in occupying a space is explored and is a strong contributor towards encapsulating the viewer. Its hybrid stasis for brief moments unwinds a journey of transformation, adapting to environments like an organism whilst developing its own sense of existence within a space. Artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Ellsworth Kelly and Jessica stockholder hold a strong link to underpinning the current work.

Laurie Clark

Laurie is a multi-disciplined artist who studied at Manchester Metropolitan University. Whichever medium she is using, pattern and colour always feature heavily in her work. She is currently developing a series of paintings and mixed media pieces infusing vintage wallpaper designs, fabrics and nature. They are influenced by the patterns and colours of the Art Deco period and Arts and Crafts movement, in particular the work of Henry Macintosh and William Morris. Within these paintings she has tried to give a sense of age and history, leaving the impression they are fragments of a time gone by. She uses materials she finds lying around, stamps, old letters, tea bag paper and dress patterns. Each collage is hand sewn and uses a broad variety of materials to give a tactile and unique quality.

Joan Beal

Joan has studied for two hours a week at W.E.A. classes for two years. Last year, aged 72, she suffered a stroke. Her art played an important part in her recovery. She tries to use unusual subjects and materials for her work. The portrait was done using instant coffee. She does not comply with many rules: sometimes it works, other times it doesn’t. She doesn’t worry about the failures. She just tries again!