Sunday 21^st April to Saturday 27^th April

Sunday 21^st 1pm - 4pm

Monday 23^rd to Friday 26^th 10am - 4.45pm

Saturday 27^th 10am - 4pm

Beyond the Visible is an exhibition of figurative paintings by award-winning artist Jane Pine. Her contemporary paintings empathetically depict the naked male figure. Inspired by personal experience, family relationships and historical stories, Jane interconnects narratives using precious artefacts, heartfelt letters and photographs. This serves as the inspiration for her work, bridging the past with the present through a profound journey of self- reflection and analysis. By exploring the experiences of three generations of male relatives, Jane has developed a personal understanding of the challenges surrounding men's mental health. Across different eras, she has observed the difficulties some men face in expressing their emotions and anxieties.

Using oil paint on canvas and board, her paintings sensitively depict emotional and psychological states through body language. The figures are detached, contained, and isolated within empty or abstract spaces. Naked, with only a piece of draped fabric offering solace, they convey a profound sense of men's intricate nature, balancing strength with internal vulnerability and fragility. Ultimately, her figurative paintings are intended to evoke an emotional response from the viewer to foster a sense of connection and empathy.

Jane exhibits widely in the South West, Manchester and London.

Awards:

2021 Society of Women Artists Rosemary & Co Award

2017 Devon Artist Network Emerging Artist Award

Website janepine.com

Instagram @jane_pine_artist

Facebook @janepineart

Monday 29^th April to Saturday 4^th May  ~ 10am - 4pm daily

Sarah's work is abstract and semi-abstract with a graphic, mid-century feel.
She works in tempera, coloured pencil, gouache, oil and collage, mostly on paper.
Sarah studied Fine Art Sculpture at Central St Martins, Exeter Art College and Dublin's National College of Art and Design before a career making creatures for film and TV.
Sarah has been working in 2D for the last 2 years.

Sunday 5^th May to Saturday 11^th May  ~ 10am - 5pm (Sunday 12pm - 5pm)

Totnes & Dartington Open Studios group are delighted to be back at Birdwood Gallery. This group of artists was formed 24 years ago, starting as a small group of 20, and has grown from strength to strength.

37 local artists will be showcasing their work, as a taster for this year's Open Studios Event, which will take place at the end of May, Friday 24th – Monday 27th.

During Open Studios, the artists open their studios and workshops to the public, giving access to their creative worlds not normally seen by the public.

This exhibition at Birdwood Gallery will have an exciting collection of wide ranging work, including paintings, ceramics, sculpture, prints, illustration, textiles and collage.

Sunday 12^th May to Saturday 18^th May  Sunday evening 5pm – 7pm then 10am - 4.45pm daily

I’m very pleased to be returning to Birdwood Gallery this coming May. My solo show, X-Axis, will be featuring work from the last 12 months, including photography, photo-montage, collage and audio compositions informed by the featured work which will be available for listening/download.

The following is a list of interests, influences and preoccupations:

Walls; empty shops; carparks; charity shop window displays; ambient/drone music; The Beats; clouds; bus-stop advertising; Baudelaire; looking after the elderly; Dada; The Fall; Roots Reggae; Rauschenberg; Joe Strummer; teaching; Malevich; Provoke Era Japanese photography; Jean-Michel Basquiat; Angela Carter; Fernando Pessoa; The New Topographics; The Doors; the freedom of anonymity; walking in a crowd; rail travel; Wim Wenders; Delta Blues; Les Raillizes Denudes; J G Ballard; my piano; Edward Hopper; William Eggleston; misspent youth; German Pilsner; Punk Rock; The Guggenheim, Venice; the future…

Sunday 19^th May to Saturday 25^th May  ~ 10am - 4.45pm daily Except Sunday 10am – 3pm Saturday 10am – 4.30pm

Art House is a community arts space in South Brent. It hosts classes in a range of creative subjects including ceramics.

This exhibition is of work by 14 potters who all come and use the facilities at Art House. Some of the makers have many years experience under their potters aprons, while others have discovered clay more recently.  What they all have in common is that they take creative risks and make for pleasure and personal discovery rather than for functionality, fame or fortune. 

Some works will be for sale and commissions can be taken.

For the duration of the exhibition we will have a makers demonstration so if you have questions about clay then bring them with you.

Sunday 26^th May to Saturday 1^st June  ~ 10am - 5pm every day

In sight: visible, near at hand, close to being achieved or realised.

Insight: the ability to gain a clear, deep, and sometimes sudden, understanding of someone or something, perhaps a complicated problem or situation.

For the past eighteen months Contemporary Markmakers have been enquiring into the ‘The Art Spirit’ by Robert Henri (1923) who suggests to ‘find out what is really important to you. Then sing your song. You will have something to sing about and your whole heart will be in the singing.’

The topics we have explored include qualities of being, affect, forces of nature, universality, Buddha-nature, memory and time. We have responded to meditation, poetry, music, spoken word, place, memories and dreams. And we have used insight practices; drawing analogs and transcriptions with process led practices to explore what artist John Skinner calls ‘the silent languages of paint’ while including such as drawing, print and textiles.

Now we are delighted to offer our ‘InSight’ exhibition. Our long research into what we mean, feel and express with our marks by this gem of a word has been intriguing. We have ventured out and enquired within, exploring how what we have ‘tripped over’ resonates with who we are and what is of interest to us now. As Jung said, about art:

            “The creative process, so far as we are able to follow it at all,

            consists in the unconscious activation of an archetypal* image,

            and in elaborating and shaping this image into the finished work.

            By giving it shape, the artist translates it into the language of the

            present, and so makes it possible for us to find our way back

            to the deepest springs of life.”

            (CG Jung,130)

You may also like to consider the exhibition as one artwork in itself for as artist and academic John Danvers (2016) suggests ‘The whole seems to have a coherence which is not apparent in it’s many parts’ and furthermore that ‘Each of us presents a distinctive world view in so far as we are located at different points within the wider field. Yet we offer shared perspectives in so far as our fields of being conjoin, interflow and eddy around each other as currents do in a stream or river’. That of course includes you the viewer as we welcome you to join us in gaining InSight.

Instagram: #contemporarymarkmakers

Website: markmakers.avenda.uk

Contact: Josie Gould; josiegould@yahoo.co.uk

*Archetype: symbols representing aspects of the psyche that derive from the accumulated experience of humankind, collective, shared ancestral memories.