Animate Arts Company’s projects positively animate everyday lives, engage and empower people to create memories that make you smile.

We believe in the magic in people, bringing creativity alive through workshops and participatory events, led by inspiring artists and performers. Animate Arts is passionate about connecting and working with communities through thoughtful and considered experiences, creating bespoke projects for those involved.

Based in Kent, Animate Arts is a collective of professional artists and performers collaborating together to create and deliver unique workshops, experiences and artworks for audiences of all ages, backgrounds and abilities. Animate Arts actively seeks communities and individuals to get creative, engage into the Arts and explore themes of well-being, community cohesion and participation. The organisation’s portfolio is inspiringly diverse, ranging from site-specific installations, street theatre, public art, theatre productions, creative sports events and more.

Animate is a registered company in England, company registration number 06182774

The Pod, 8 Dolphin Street, Herne Bay, Kent
www.animatecommunityarts.com

Priory Gallery is a new gallery opening up in Orpington.

We are currently looking for artists to exhibit. please contact us for more details.
43-45 Orpington High Street Orpington , Kent
www.priorygallery.yolasite.com

January 27 to February 26 2012
Sally Trueman and Patricia Castle will be holding a joint exhibition at the Margate Gallery, the Private View will take place on the 27th of January, from 5.00 pm – 9.00 pm, and all are welcome.

Sally Trueman has enjoyed many solo exhibitions in the UK, and abroad, followed by museum acquisitions and public commissions. Her work makes up part of the Museum of Carcassone, the Brighton Museum Collections as well as the Morton private museum, in New York.

Patricia Castle has exhibited widely. Her work has been shown in the Southwark Festival, with the Royal Society of British Artists, The Royal Society of Marine Painters, The Welcome Foundation, Price Waterhouse and Lloyds of London.

Both artists have come together to share their passion for light whether it it falls onto a sun-drenched Mediterranean landscape or nudes bathed in sunlight, the artist capturing the swirling movements and reflections of seawater.

This new exhibition “Lovers of Light” is coming to the Margate Gallery.

26 January to 8 February 2012
A mixed exhibition featuring work by 11 Kent based artists

For most of my painting life I have concentrated on abstracts in acrylic. This has taken me most especially on a 6 year journey into space – literally. 98% of the paintings that I did during that time were inspired by deep space. This means a couple hundred paintings. Exploration of the subject was fascinating and brought me some very memorable experiences, including meeting the 4th man to have walked on the moon, Alan Bean. Exploration of acrylics on unprimed canvas was also a fascinating and very fulfilling experience. Acrylics and I have become friends.

The last 4-5 years have has my art journey take me to a mixed bag of non-objective abstracts and more traditional representational oils. Today’s paintings have narrowed down to an exclusive study of oils. And for as long as this muse calls me I will follow her.

I am an American living in Kent for the last 2 years. My husband and I have rented a place on a small farm in West Malling. This has me exposed to Jacob Sheep, Alpacas and Gypsy horses. A short walk to the park and I get my fix of Highland Cattle eating grass in a grazing program.

My current paintings reflect my love of farm animals, my admiration for the English paths, my appreciation for what I see in my travels and my missing of my kids and grandkids. Abstracts will be back in my portfolio again I know but for now it’s all about the oils. There is a lot still to learn.

Location: West Malling
Contact: eileen.mcconkey@gmail.com
Website: www.eileenmcconkeyartist.blogspot.com

I graduated as an illustrator, but now consider myself as an artist, but still enjoy illustrating.
I like creating paintings that explore the border between abstract and figurative, playing with the connections we make with image and forms, creating surreal worlds using familiar shapes and suggestive images that are open to the viewer for interpretation.

My paintings would be hard to reproduce and harder to explain, because they are seen differently by different people. I ‘am inspired by all forms of painting and image making, the dualities in painting; light and dark, natural and artificial, micro and macro, chaos and order, messy and clean etc. Texture and pattern are important in my work they help take your eyes on a journey around the canvas, creates a contrast or extra layer and influences what I paint and how the canvas takes shape.

Location: Folkestone
Contact: davcreation@yahoo.co.uk
Website: www.davespainting.co.uk

After graduating from Canterbury College of Art with a degree in Graphic design and a few years as a book designer, Priscilla began to work as a freelance artist, and has illustrated over 40 books for children for a variety of authors, including Harry Secombe, Adrian Mitchell, Julia Jarman, Michael Rosen and Hilary McKay, as well as occasionally illustrating her own words too!

After many years in London and even more in Suffolk, she is now settled in Kent with her husband the artist David Hayward and has a studio at the Creek Creative building in Faversham, where she works rather untidily, but with great enthusiasm!

Least likely to say: It’s wonderful working at home on my own

Current UK publications
Lulu series with Hilary MacKay Scholastic
Nursery Rhyme Crimes. Frances Lincoln

Location: Faversham
Contact: pmlamont@btinternet.com
Website: www.priscillalamont.com

My art is quite varied and I am still finding my feet after so many years but I have recently had the pleasure of creating some commission paintings (acrylic) for a local school music room and it has lead me to take an interest in portrait painting. I also have a passion for life drawing and painting nature. Watch this space.

Location: Sittingbourne
Contact: nikig19@hotmail.co.uk

When we are deep in day dream, we reflect openly on the way things could be. This can blur the imagined and the real. We stir from this altered state and just for a moment it imposes itself on the real world and we see things as we imagine them to be rather than reality says they are. The images arising from these moments if captured have a gentle sense of myth about them. Memory immediately makes them ambiguous… maybe it was really like this. These moments captured still more formally in the medium that is painting serves to confirm their need to be considered as real, the chance they may never have existed becomes irrelevant… these ‘…what if…’ moments are the essence of my work. It sits firmly in the Romantic tradition.
‘…. and the intention, now petrified, had become an object…’ We surprise ourselves with how things can be, caught out of the corner of our eye.

Location: Folkestone
Contact: jhhwright@mac.com
Website: www.jonathanhwright.com

I am an independent art curator based in the UK.

My passion for contemporary, interactive and performance art has allowed me to develop my skills as a creative thinker and organiser of artistic exhibitions. My previous experience at the Turner Contemporary, Margate in Public Programmes has expanded my knowledge of up-and-coming contemporary installation art as well as collaborative performance based works as seen in our recent YOU ARE HERE opening. I have worked with Proud Galleries in London, a commercial Photographic gallery exhibiting images from the 1960′s-today and also began my working career as a volunteer at the Fairfield City Museum and Gallery in Sydney, Australia where I am from.

I completed a BA in Design for Theatre and Television in 2007 and went on to work as a props & lighting designer and set maker for various Theatrical productions in NSW, Australia. I have also worked for the Australian Broadcasting Commission in the design department. My recent Master in Art Curatorship degree completed in 2011 at the University of Sydney has enabled me to network in the curatorial and art field in Australia and England as well as obtain invaluable curating skills for all kinds of artistic exhibitions and programmes. I am currently based in Margate, UK where I have crossed over from working for an arts organisation to freelance curating.

Please feel free to get in touch even if only to discuss a few ideas, I would love to hear from you and see where it takes us!

Location: Margate
Contact: danithedesigner@gmail.com
Website: www.cargocollective.com/daniellegilbertcurator