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This summer sees the 10th anniversary of Heather Green’s stewardship of Walsingham Gallery & Framing. To celebrate this momentous milestone we are holding an afternoon exhibition launch on Saturday 3rd August from 1 – 4pm. Party cakes & fizz will flow! The summer show features magnificent paintings in oils by renowned local artist Pamela Noyes, serene coastal scenes in oils by Bella Bigsby, atmospheric oil and mixed media landscape works by Nigel Skinner and expressive, vibrant coastal landscape paintings in acrylic by Mary Blue.

Huge thanks to friends, family, neighbours and dearly trusted staff for unwavering help and support, and of course to our wonderful clients for making it all possible.

Here’s to the next 10 years!

We are delighted to welcome new artists Nicola Hart and Rosemary Carruthers IEA to the gallery this Spring who are both showing a fine selection of vibrant, colourful work. They are joining new collections of work from gallery regulars such as Rachel Thomas, Kate Heiss and Michelle Daniels. We have an explosion of colour in the gallery that we are really looking forward to sharing with you!

Rosemary Carruthers IEA is based in Norfolk.  She works in gouache, acrylic, oil, pastel and mixed media in a wide range of subjects.  She derives great pleasure from incorporating animal and human figures into her work as they go about their daily work or play. Some of the work in this collection takes lockdown and the pandemic as its theme, exploring elements of people’s lives during this time in a playful and colourful way.

Nicola Hart, also based in Norfolk is exhibiting an incredible collection of new work. Continually striving to represent life in a new and exciting way, whilst retaining an element of realism, Nicola works primarily in acrylics and builds her compositions by applying layers of paint and collage comprising of differing colours and textures. Variety and experimentation are the main emphasis of her work, and acrylics allow her to work with speed and spontaneity, and provide her work with movement and energy. Nicola has always been fascinated by the way different textures affect the paint – how the emergence of different layers, revealing or hiding, draw the onlooker into the painting so that something different can always be seen.

The exhibition continues until the end of May 2022

In our Christmas exhibition this year we have a great selection of work from artists old and new, a refreshed range of limited edition prints, ceramics and jewellery.  We opened on Friday 15th November at 6pm with a preview evening, followed by two opening days Saturday and Sunday 10am – 5pm.

Fiona Fawcett

For the first time, we are delighted to welcome contemporary glass artist Fiona Fawcett who works from her Fired Glass Studio in rural Suffolk.   She specialises in kiln formed glass and uses fusing and casting techniques that allow her to manipulate the glass through the processes of heat to achieve 2D pieces and 3D sculptural forms. Cold working processes are used to exploit the optical qualities of the glass and help create shadows and reflections creating an element of vitality and movement. The cast pieces are hand polished and take weeks to make.

Fiona’s glasswork is influenced by the natural landscape and maritime environment. Her work is an interpretation of how the landscape is formed and develops through natural processes.

‘Honister – Green Crag’ (pictured above) is one of a series of pieces inspired by the landscape of Honister in Borrowdale in the Lake District. The form is taken from a piece of Honister green slate and the colours reflect the varying colours and light of the natural landscape.

Becky Munting

Also exhibiting with us  for the first time is painter Becky Munting  who is showing a series of small studies of bugs and bees.  These exquisite jewel-like paintings are simply delightful.

Becky is inspired by the birds, animals and insects of the East Anglian landscape where she grew up and now lives and works.  Working in oils, her work is an attempt to capture the spirit of the creatures she paints, representing them in a naturalistic way.

Nigel Skinner

A regular exhibitor with us here in Walsingham,  Nigel Skinner has recently been working on a series of collagraph and mixed media prints, a selection of which we are thrilled to be showing.

Inspired by the Norfolk landscape in which he lives and paints, these new mixed media works see a return to familiar themes for Nigel.  Elements of the natural world, found objects and textures combine to create these evocative and atmospheric works.
To see more of Nigel’s work please click here

Other Work in the Show

We have a refreshed range of pieces from regular exhibitors such as printmaking from Kate Heiss and Diana Ashdown, sculpture by Carol Pask, including two fabulous new bronzes, ceramics by Jane Bygrave and Rob Wheeler, and much more besides.

To see Carol Pask’s new sculptures please see here

The gallery shop is well stocked with cards, Christmas cards, advent calenders, jewellery, art books and gifts.

The exhibition continues until the end of January 2020 and we will be open as usual over the festive period, only closing for 25th, 26th December and 1st, 2nd January.

 

 

For our anniversary exhibition ‘Summer’ we have selected a fine range of works from a number of artists – some gallery regulars, some occasional exhibitors, new, emerging artists and artists who were part of the very first exhibition five years ago.

We are delighted to welcome back Annette Rolston who was with us at the very start.  Her intricate linocuts incorporating animals, figures, landscape and pattern are always a feast for the eyes.  She is an experienced printmaker and printmaking tutor, working in Diss, Norfolk.

 

Carol Pask’s beautifully elegant sculptural ceramics have graced the plinths in the gallery for a while now.  They are always very popular and find new homes quickly.  Her work evolves as a response to the beauty and fragility of the natural world.  She is an expert in smoke and pit firing techniques, seeking a balance between the controlled structure of the work and the chaos of the firing.

 

For the first time, we are so pleased to introduce the sculptural vessels of John Mallett.  Working primarily in metal, he is exploring the possibilities of combining and finding harmony between modern technologies, such as computer design and 3d printing, and the art of traditional bronze casting.  This body of work references the history of ornamental vessels, such as Chinese ritual bronzes and aspects of Japanese culture, such as Kintsugi – the art of repairing broken ceramics with precious metals.

 

Also on show are a number of pieces from gallery regulars, a range of limited edition prints and as always our gallery shop is well stocked with cards, ceramics, jewellery and books.

The Awards

The Fine Art Trade Guild, which we are members of, hold an annual International Art and Framing Industry Awards weekend.  The awards are for businesses right across our industry from framing suppliers and manufacturers to individual artists and framers.  There are framing competitions that include Best Mount Design and the Guild Framing Challenge.  Framers like me are encouraged to pull out all the stops for their competition entries.  The design must be ambitious, creative, well thought out, meet the entry criteria and be perfectly executed.

I decided to enter this year for the first time, the Best Mount Design: Hand Cut competition.  All entrants were given the same image of an iconic Charles Rennie Mackintosh chair to design and create a mount for.

In March, I was delighted to receive the news that I had been selected as a finalist in the competition along with three other outstanding entries.  Then, at the awards dinner, it was so exciting to hear my name announced as the winner that I couldn’t help utter a little shriek of astonishment and delight!  Nick Murphy from the category sponsor ColourMount,  Slater Harrison,  a leading UK mountboard manufacturer presented me with my award.

Background to the Design

When the Fine Art Trade Guild announced that the subject for this year’s mount design award was to be the image of a Charles Rennie Mackintosh chair to celebrate 150 year’s since his birth, I knew I had to enter.  I have been a fan of Mackintosh design since my teens when studying art & design at school.  As a family we had strong connections in Scotland.  We lived there when we were young and visited often.  My brother & I were both born close to Glasgow.

I fondly remember searching out the Mackintosh buildings and iconic sites with my Mum in 1990 when Glasgow was the European City of Culture.  I even dreamt at that time of attending Glasgow School of Art, one of Mackintosh’s most famous buildings.  Ultimately, that wasn’t where I studied for my degree, but a fondness for that building remained.  I was devastated to see it destroyed by fire for the second time in June 2018.

The Design

My mount design is a triple mount with cut out details within a channel in the second mount that reveal rich coloured velvet squares to reflect the upholstery of the chair.  The uppermost mount combines an oval and straight cut combination with a debossed line to echo the curves in the back of the chair.  The overall design is intended to be reminiscent of the Mackintosh style by incorporating a combination of stylised, organic curved elements with straight lines and geometric shapes.  As in all good mount design, the colours used are intended to enhance and complement the image.

The mount was entirely cut with hand operated equipment as defined in the entry criteria for the category.  A seperate category for CMC (computerised mount cutter) designs was introduced this year.

 

At the end of the evening, they announced the subjects for the 2020 framing competitions.  They are ‘Street Art’ for the Mount Design and ‘Back to the 1980’s’ for the Guild Framing Challenge.  So, thinking caps on!

 

Our featured artist Kate Heiss is a contemporary printmaker inspired by her love of nature, especially the flowers and  birds of the landscapes of Norfolk and Cambridgeshire.  Her small limited edition prints are dynamic, bold and illustrative in vibrant fresh colours.

Kate studied at the Royal College of Art graduating with an MA in Textile Design in 1997. She then worked as a textile designer across a wide range of fashion brands before setting up her own printmaking studio in 2011.

She works in a variety of printmaking techniques including linocut, screenprint and collage. Often her works combine more than one technique making her collection of handmade prints truly unique. All of her work is handmade in her studios in Ashwell, Hertfordshire and Thornham, Norfolk.

Kate has been showing her work with us for two years now and we are delighted to have a fabulous selection of her work available to buy online and in the gallery.  For pieces that are available online please go to Kate Heiss Prints

We are delighted to  welcome new artist Carole Ann Grace to our gallery with her vibrant abstracted Norfolk landscape paintings.  Her work is a response to landscape, memory, a sense of place.  Emotion is expressed in colour and gestural mark-making.  Working largely with acrylic on canvas her work is bold, colourful and exciting.

The show opened on 16th November and continues until the end of January 2019.  We will be open as usual over the festive period, only closing for 25th, 26th December and 1st, 2nd January.

We also have new work from a number of gallery regulars including linocuts from Kate Heiss, sculpture by Carol Pask, ceramics by Rob Wheeler and new Limited Edition Prints of work by Joe Ramm and Nicky Litchfield. In our well-stocked gallery shop you will find a fabulous range of cards, Christmas cards, advent calendars, jewellery, textiles, art books and gifts.