Sue & Steve Owen
'Chalk & Cheese'
Tuesday 26th October to Saturday 6th November 2021
Open 11am to 5pm Tuesday to Saturday
Private View and Refreshments on Tuesday 26th October, 6pm to 8pm
An exhibition of recent Textiles, Painting and Print Making by local artists Sue and Steve. The title of the exhibition refers to our background in art education, and our passion for colour, texture and pattern. Whilst our working methods are similar our outcomes are as varied as chalk and cheese!
Sue Owen
Sue taught Art Textiles in F.E for many years before retiring and having the time to focus on her own work which demonstrates her love of colour, pattern and texture in textiles.
Starting points are usually experimental mark making, the use of collage, or mixed media techniques. Sue draws inspiration from the natural world and is also interested in architectural forms.
Work is constructed of layers of hand dyed and printed fabrics which are pieced together to create depth of colour and spontaneous imagery. It is the materials themselves which indicate the direction the work will take, and often ideas change as Sue introduces new fabrics or recycles pieces. The addition of hand printed sheer fabrics used as an overlay generates interesting colour variation to Sue’s work which is further enhanced with hand and or machine embroidery.
Recent works include landscapes using combinations of fabrics including vintage lace, fragments of knitted yarn and hand printed silk. These are combined with beads, shells and sometimes interesting elements like rusty bolts and nails which add character and texture to the piece.
Sue has discovered another direction by exploring the concept of an ‘irregular edge’ in pieces such as The Roaches and Garden 2021. These are composed of individual sections of printed fabrics enhanced with hand and machine stitch.
www.instagram.com/suestextiles
Steve Owen
Starting points for the paintings are quite often the faded graphics in 50’s and 60’s magazines and often there is a fair amount of ‘pop’ ephemera buried in the resulting imagery. Paintings start fairly chaotic but are gradually ‘tamed’ however the temptation to reach a finished outcome too quickly is often difficult to resist. Initial shapes and collage material lie half concealed under washes of colour-half eroded and scratched away, and what may appear spontaneous in the work often requires destruction, obliteration, reworking and refining.
The limited edition prints in the exhibition are a new development, combining monotypes with paint and using the ‘reduction’ mono printing method first used by Degas. There is a spontaneity and boldness about this method which leads to some really dramatic results. Starting points for the prints range from retro typefaces to moody imagined interiors and kitchens.
Steve Owen studied Fine Art Painting at Wimbledon School of Art before embarking on a career teaching Art in secondary schools and FE colleges.
He has exhibited in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and the Bankside gallery, as well as many other commercial galleries and this is his third exhibition at SproutArt with Sue.
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