Each colour has its own character which with the right intervention can foster a unique connection with another. Relationships can vary where two colours have the ability to integrate or repel one another. My aim is to offer a combination that creates harmony, beauty and energy while avoiding impoverishment embodied by coarseness and negativity. My real satisfaction however, comes from my audience identifying these alliances within the whole or any part of the painting.

I begin a piece with little consideration towards the finished article. The physical landscape of the North Downs surrounding my studio is the only vehicle I use to influence these abstract works. The canvas will evolve as I layer on more colour while manipulating the transparency, viscosity and flow of brush marks. These elements I’ll pursue until the canvas sings and the door to the cave is open. The result, after what is often a labour intensive process can look and feel as spontaneous as a chemical reaction.

Acrylics are a superb medium for attaining these goals. They are malleable, mix well and relatively quick drying depending on the thickness I choose to lay down. A final coat of gloss enhances the feeling of energy and character that would ordinarily be unobtainable.

These explorations in colour challenge an inherent resistance I had previously to using colours unhindered. It has been a liberating performance and experience for me and I view these paintings as each having a life and character of their own.

Location: Bearsted – Maidstone
Contact: marc_lawrence123@hotmail.com
Website: www.marc-lawrence-art.blogspot.com

I have worked with paints and inks for over 34 years, initially decorating fine bone china for Royal Crown Derby for 3 years, followed by a 17 year periodwhen I printed fine art etchings for many successful local artists including Graham Clarke, Michael Chaplin and Robert R Greenhalf.

Feeling the need to expand my mind and develop more self-confidence, at the age of 39 I took on a graduate diploma in counselling and I have since specialised in the field of eating disorders, working with people suffering from anorexia, bulimia or binge-eating.

Over the past 2 years I have been developing my own artwork which provides a calming, restorative balance to the psychological demands of my counselling work.
I work on canvas using acrylic paints, which I love for their vibrancy, texture and immediacy. I mainly work from photographs that I have taken myself although sometimes I will use images provided by the friends or family who have commissioned a painting.

I have been inspired by the work of Georgia O Keefe whose flower paintings have a life and boldness that I resonate with. I also love the photographs of Christopher Beane who creates images using flowers and oil colours floating on water which fire my imagination.

In my own work I see each painting as an individual portrait, trying to capture the essence of each flower as a unique being with its own intricate complexity, which is very like what I do with my clients in my counselling work.

Location: Maidstone
Website: www.pamsflowerpaintings.co.uk
Contact: pamcaney@aol.com

Pattern and rhythm in everyday objects, photographed close-up or juxtaposed against other elements, form a large part of my portfolio.

As part of a series of contemporary and original images they can be viewed at my online gallery, Ammonite Photography.

Location: Ashford
Website: www.ammonitephotography.co.uk
Contact: michaelcolvin1@sky.com

I’m relatively new to the world of DSLR, having taken it up as a passionate hobby in 2007. With the purchase of a Canon 400D I soon became hooked and saw the world around me with different eyes.

Everything was a potential shot and the purchase of my Canon 100mm 2.8/f macro lens opened up a whole new world of beauty and splendour.

My love of floral portraits and studies dominate my work although landscapes are a particular favourite too.

I’m hoping to exhibit my work in the near future so I’ll keep you posted with the details when they become available.

Thanks for taking the time to view my profile and please visit my website to view my portfolio.

Website: www.donnarphotography.co.uk
Contact: nature@donnarphotography.co.uk

Working in both analogue and digital photography, I continue to work on projects that both stretch the medium of photography but also offer aesthetically taxing compositions. In choosing to work mostly with fine art photography, I would wish for the images to reflect a sense of beauty and also originality.

Website: www.spurriers.com
Contact: tim@spurriers.com

My work tends to be mainly abstract, which I feel has the ability to connect with the viewer on a deeper psychological level, than that of figurative or more representational works. My current body of contemporary paintings and drawings explores the theme of Reincarnation and Spirituality.

Location: Maidstone
Website: www.dejavufineart.com
Contact: info@dejavufineart.com

My art is about the appropriation and restructuring of found objects and
materials that are already in existence.

I try to attract the eye of the viewer by choosing objects that they will connect to, and that are instantly recognizable by association and nostalgic response.

Starting with an initial proposal, I borrow elements that resonate with each objects history and join them together to create new narratives.

I like to explore the qualities of the mediums that I choose and create
techniques that allow the materials to create new forms.

Interested in global, social and economical issues, my inspirations originate
from popular culture dating back to the 1960’s onwards and my influences
include Peter Blake, Jeff Koons, Ed Ruscha and Vik Muniz.

With an underlying sense of humour and the use of parody, my finished
artworks reflect the funny side of life as well as the seriousness of reality.

Location: Ashford
Website: www.tammyclark.co.uk
Contact: gizmomugwai@hotmail.com

The imagery in my paintings and the form of my sculptures inhabit the rich territory between abstraction and figuration.

I am from the first generation of artists for whom the landscape of our visual horizons started with the world changing Apollo mission photographs of the earth from space. I am influenced by Hubble’s beautiful images of emerging nebula and haunting photographs of sub-atomic particles. I am also inspired by the pastel colours of Odilon Redon; the Petri dish colour studies of Ellen Altfest; the skies of Turner and Nolde; and the wet on wet techniques of Frankenthaler and Xingjian.

My paintings are abstractions from the world around me: dark skies; looming presences under a quarter moon; silhouettes of black against darkness; moonlit kipper clouds against the backdrop of the milky-way. Horizons are hinted at if not always present; they are studies in light and colour. My sculptures evoke dry and twisted bone, fossils and slumping flesh. Both give space for the audience to fill in gaps and use memory and imagination to see the whole.

Location: Little Chart
Website: www.harrietgifford.com
Contact: harriet@hgifford.co.uk

I am a multimedia schitzophrenic. I work in any medium that will enhance the experience of creating, and seeing. I paint, draw, make beaded items and chainmaille, create felted images and would be nothing without my beloved  photography…
Why stand in front of someone else’s shop window, yearning- create your own!

Location: Dover
Website: www.sjs-artandsoul.com
Contact: sharon@sjs-artandsoul.com

My paintings are inspired by my love of living by the sea (combined with my love of eating some of the creatures that end up in nets and pots along our coastline.)  Working chiefly in acrylics, with a bit of spray paint for good measure, my recent work has taken traditional “postcard scenes” from the Thanet coast and given them a psychedelic overhaul.

Location: Broadstairs
Website: www.ieuanedwards.com
Contact: mail@ieuanedwards.com