The Real, The Imaginary, and The Poetic 

Advanced Painting Workshop Exhibition

Most of the artists in this year's lively exhibition at the Gallery at Morley College have been painting for many years and have exhibited widely. This advanced painting group meets on Friday at Morley College to paint and share ideas about art, and to experiment with techniques and materials. It shows not only a keen sense of the group's commitment to painting but also, in their diverse ways, to the relevance of painting today - in particular, in the way each individual artist responds to the exhibition's given theme.
The exhibition provides an opportunity to buy the paintings on show at affordable prices.

"The Real, The Imaginary and The Poetic" offers an exploration of cultural traditions, personal memories, and landscape, and responds to contemporary issues of personal freedom, spiritual space, ecology and technology.

Katharine Hoskyns draws attention to and warns about global warning. Her haunting pictures emanate a sense of loss. Geoff Wright considers our relationship with space: "our use of space reveals what we are about as an entity in space". Olive Austin subjectively explores the significant motifs of "other worlds" such as the cultures of the Pacific, the Far East and Africa. Lyndsey Thwaites' work discovers the sinister undertones in nursery rhymes. In contrast, Elma Masattienne's paintings are about Paradise, a place in which to be free. Laura Broughton paints dreamlike colour worlds that encompass people's characters within them. Karin Warne's interest is in that which illuminates the everyday, whilst, Michael Maclaifeartaigh's luscious experiments with colour combinations evoke amorphous, tantalising forms. In contrast, Hazel Turvey explores the hallucinatory influence of ancient monuments and landscapes. These chime with Annie Price's intense, mythical and invigorating landscapes. Jo Miller creates romantic depictions of weather and landscape intertwined, whilst in her work Deborah Burnstone's random marks build up a balance and resolution through colour and spatial harmony.