Mill Town Arts Exhibition at the Town Hall, Hebden Bridge.

I am taking part in the Mill Town Arts Exhibition at the Town Hall from 11^th January until the 7^th February. This is a collective exhibition of some of the Mill Town artists with exciting and diverse work.

The two, fairly large pieces of work, of mine are on the same Shop Window Reflection theme that I have been pursuing for many years. They are both different in execution one being a pencil drawing on cartridge paper and the other a watercolour, both with a slight sense of humour.

One is of a long gone Hebden Bridge Opticians shop window, on Albert Street, where the images of some aspects of the reflection become slightly blurry and has a little double vision in the street name and other aspects, appropriate for an opticians. A plants obscures the Opticians name making it difficult to see and recognise the shop. It is a moment captured in time, things have moved on and changed. The shop is now a barbers.

The other is a diving Shop called ‘Below the Surface’ in Hebden Bridge reflecting a market day, where the shop display yields fish swimming across the reflected hill side and sub aqua divers swimming across the street. Underwater, again appropriate for Hebden Bridge, can be seen a muddle of coral, a person crossing, yellow traffic lines, stones, crabs and myself, watching and photographing this specticle.

Both pictures are from the outside of the shop looking in.

Mill Town Arts is a diverse collective of artists and creatives working in and out of the Calder valley. They organise a range of ‘not for profit’ events and exhibitions throughout the year.

• Mill Town Arts Instagram
• Mill Town Arts Facebook

Peat Appreciation Society Exhibition

At the moment I am exhibiting in a group exhibition of the Peat Appreciation Society (PAS), in Gibson Mill. This runs from January 23rd until April 26th. Up till March 28th Gibson Mill is open from Friday until Sunday from 10am until 3pm. After that time it will be open 7 days a week from 10am until 4pm.

Peat Appreciation Society (PAS) is an art centred collective which aims to raise awareness and celebrate Peat. It joins together critically engaged creative people for open ended discussions and collaboration. It aims to deepen and share the knowledge and skill of their creative processes and aims for excellence within their practice.

PAS showcases work together and promotes the value of peat as a unique and highly valuable biodiverse habitat, an immense carbon store and a natural flood defence. It celebrates the natural, cultural and archeological heritage of peatlands in the UpperCalder Valley – a community within the Great North Bog.

My oil paintings for this exhibition are based on watercolour paintings I made in-situ at Ogden Water and in Kerry, Ireland. The superb reflections, of artists, on that bright day inspired a painting.  A group of us gathered to examine the created Bunds and plant Sphagnum Moss. It hopefully records a bit of time important to us all.

The sad scene of the peat cuttings amongst the beautiful Kerry Hills in Ireland also gave me the inspiration to create a picture. This along with the healthy regeneration of the Sphagnum in the ditches gave another reason to paint these pictures.