Diane Hughes

At Copthall County Grammar School, North London, Diane had inspirational teachers. Benefitting from these, she arrived at the Slade straight from school in 1961.

Diane’s first tutor was Andrew Forge (then a celebrity from Radio 3’s program The Critics). Keith Vaughan was her tutor in her final year.

Chelmer Water Meadows, mixed media

At first they were all required to do a great deal of observational work in the Antique Room, followed by work in the Life Room. Patrick George ran a course joined by students from the Bartlett School of Architecture, which Diane says was both inspirational and challenging.

In the early 1960s, expectations were changing. Students moved in, and on, to new preoccupations in response to influences from both sides of the Atlantic: abstract expressionism and of course, Pop Art movements.

Diane took herself off to the sculpture department, where she experimented with canvas and plaster, creating three-dimensional forms and painting them, which was enabled by the change from oils to acrylics.

Spring Reflection, mixed media

Diane considers herself fortunate to have been at the Slade before and during these significant changes. The practice of drawing has always been central to her work. On graduation in 1965, she became a lecturer at both the Lucy Clayton School, Bond Street, London and The Dick Shepherd School, London. Later, she returned to her old school, now as a teacher – Copthall Grammar School.

Then marriage, daughters and a move to the Essex countryside. Diane became head of Essex Adult Arts Education.

Now retired from employment, Diane has more time to devote to her painting, ceramics and sculpture. She has her own studio and she continues to hold group workshops with likeminded artists and friends.

Willow Herbs, mixed media

For more information on Diane’s exhibition at the Gallery in the Garden, click here.

To see more of Diane’s work, click here.

Carol Saunderson

Carol grew up in East Anglia and trained at Cambridge College of Art and Loughborough University. She has been painting professionally for more than 20 years. Her vibrant, cheerful abstract landscape paintings are derived from a combination of memory, imagination and the inspiration of the rural environment in which she lives and works. Being from a farming background, the landscape and nature are in her blood and central to her art.

The Parkland, acrylic 

Rather than the direct representation of a scene, Carol creates work about the sensations and emotions of being in the landscape at different times. What really excites her, she says, is colour and the way that different colours interact and create mood in a painting. She tries to work quickly and boldly, making interesting marks and beautiful shapes while building up textural layers. She likes her work to be positive, vibrant and playful.

On the Beach at Night, acrylic

Her paintings are also influenced by her love of mid-20th century painting and design, especially by artists such as Ivon Hitchens, and by contemporary colourists such as Barbara Rae.

Meadowland and Huts at First Light, acrylic

Carol regularly exhibits work at galleries around the UK and also undertakes private commissions. Her work has been published as both prints and greetings cards.

For more information on Carol’s exhibition at the Gallery in the Garden, click here.

To see more of Carol’s work, click here.

 

Jelena Lukić

Jelena completed her three-year postgraduate studies at the Royal Academy, London in 1990. Her parents were Serbian, and she was intrigued with their lives and cultural background. Discovering her roots and learning about her influences was important to her as a painter.

Jelena was awarded a Commonwealth Scholarship at Belgrade University. This was an informative period, unfortunately cut short by the impending troubles.

Coming from a different cultural background, Jelena has always been interested in different ethnicities. She travelled around Africa with her sketch book and spent a lot of time in the Anthropology Museum which was behind the Royal Academy.

Choice, mixed media

After her studies she painted in her studio in Antwerp for three years. She returned to England, where she trained in desktop publishing and worked for a newspaper for a couple of years whilst continuing to paint.

She was drawn to understanding more about the world and about herself. She spent 4 years learning about body psychotherapy and psychological process in the South of France.

Flower, acrylic

She married, had children, and worked as a creative designer at an art school for 10 years, continuing to paint and also developing her computer design and publishing skills.

Jelena says that her studies at the Royal Academy and in France have influenced how she interprets her analytical and emotional thoughts in her art and how she integrates her working methods.

She works with oil paints, acrylic, print and digital technologies, often layering many methods and processes. Her work is reflective, playfully questioning and exploring aspects of the self. Is it about uniting and revealing fractures, developing and examining spirituality and personality.

Podium, mixed media

She deploys many methods in her work and carries ideas through from print to digital to canvas and paint. Moving between media allows a flexibility and fluidity that she finds essential in her work.

For more information on Jelena’s exhibition at the Gallery in the Garden, click here.

To see more of Jelena’s work, click here.

Dafila Scott

Dafila grew up drawing birds from an early age, in particular, the wild Bewick swans which came to the pond in front of the family home at Slimbridge.

Dafila’s father, Sir Peter Scott, had noticed that he could identify individuals by the differences in the pattern of yellow and black on their bills. He began a study of the Bewick swans.

Dafila won a scholarship to Millfield, in Somerset. She took to drawing the individual swans and quickly became involved with her father’s studies. As a result of this, Dafila began a career as a zoologist.

After some years she turned to drawing and painting. She studied with Robin Child at Lydgate Art Research Centre in Wiltshire.

Most of Dafila’s work is inspired by wildlife and landscapes with which she has become familiar.

Working mostly in oils, sometimes in watercolours and also in pastels, she paints from a combination of field sketches and memory.

The Fenlands of East Anglia where she lives are an important source of inspiration, and she makes frequent visits to Wales, and with her husband to the Kalahari.

More recently, she has concentrated on abstract landscapes in which she finds the essence of place and brings together memories of past and recent experiences.

As a member of the Society of Wildlife Artists she has exhibited regularly at the Annual Exhibition at the Mall Galleries.

Dafila has also illustrated books.

In 2011 she spent a month as Artist in Residence on the Royal Navy’s Ice Patrol vessel in the Antarctic, sponsored by the Scott Polar Research Institute and the Royal Navy.

In 2014 she won the Birdwatch Swarovski prize. In 2015 Dafila was runner up in the David Shepherd Wildlife Artist of the Year.

For more information on Dafila’s exhibition at the Gallery in the Garden, click here.

To see more of Dafila’s work, click here.

Amanda Clark

Amanda lives deep in the north west Essex countryside and that is what truly inspires her. She has been a professional artist and illustrator for over 15 years. Raised within a creative household, her father was a great storyteller and always told fascinating stories and fairy tales. As a child, Amanda would absorb and paint these fairy tales.

It was only natural that she would continue to be alert to her surroundings and incorporate them into her paintings today. Her ‘dawn and evening walks’ through the woodland at the back of her house provide inspiration.

This is Amanda describing what she notices on one of her May walks:

‘A whisper of a breeze blowing the hawthorn petals across the mossy path and the sun low in the sky. It makes every white petal glow like fireflies against the darkening green of the trees. The woodland is full of birdsong and everywhere I try and see the woodland homes. This is part of the woods where foxes and rabbits live alongside each other. An owl calling close by. He is waiting for moonlight. The sun has made longer shadows and will soon be gone from the sky.’

For information on Amanda’s exhibition at the Gallery in the Garden, please click here.

To see our online store of Amanda’s work, click here.

 

Donald Hamilton Fraser

How refreshing it is to see an artist’s work with such confidence and bold colours. It is so immediately recognizable. Much like his art as the man, Fraser stood out in person, tall, elegant, blazer wearing from the rest of his fellow tutors, such as Sir Peter Blake at the Royal College of Art during the 60s. His students included David Hockney, Paul Caulfield and Ronald Kitaj.

Growing up, Fraser wanted to be a poet. As he was later to explain poetry, art, dance all came under the same umbrella of arts. These interests intertwined throughout his life. Apart from the abstract landscapes which will be exhibited at Gallery in the Garden in April and May, he is well known for his pictures of ballet dancers, influenced by Edgar Degas.

After the war, he went to study at St. Martins School of Art, London and there won a scholarship to study in Paris. This proved life changing. Uplifted by this stimulating artistic environment, he flourished. Inspired by De Stael, Fraser moved from early figurative works towards pure abstraction and blocks of colour, thus becoming an artist in his own right, as can be seen in his painting Sangarius II (1963) as well as his own words: ‘ What is it that makes one painting live and seem to have reality, while other paintings with strictly comparable colours and organisation seem decorative exercises?…If I have learnt anything it is to trust one’s intuition, whilly and unquestionably. To have absolute faith in what feels true.’

Fraser was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Art in 1970 and elected Royal Academician in 1985. He died on 2^nd September 2009.

Find out more about our upcoming exhibition of Hamilton Fraser’s work here.