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

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 paint the sea and people in it mostly.

Location: Folkestone
Website: www.davidlay.net
Contact: david@davidlay.net

My interest lies in art that works with an interior space. Medium, colour, technique, texture and finish are all important factors to be considered apart from the subject matter.

Location: Folkestone
Website: www.artforinteriors.co.uk
Contact: novak@dsl.pipex.com

I’m a newly exhibiting body painter. At the moment I paint for competition and events and am now broadening my art form into the fine arts.

Location: Folkestone
Website: www.carriehoyle.co.uk
Contact: carrie@carriehoyle.co.uk

“I love the way that at first glance they appear to be real maps, look closer and longer and you see that they are more or less abstract paintings…just marks, colours and lines…they make a unique and unusual gift”

If you or someone you know loves maps and or art, then this could be just what you are looking for!
All my ‘Useless Maps’ are unique original oil pastels sold in a wooden frame with a white double mount under glass.
Each image is 30 x 30cm, framed 43 x 43 cm and cost £100 + Postage & Packing or you collect.
If you are interested in viewing, buying or
commissioning a ‘Useless Map’ of your town, village, farm then contact me by phone or email at:

John Sims
Apartment 2. 35/37 Tontine Street
Folkestone, Kent CT20 1JT
Mob: 07985164935

Location: Folkestone
Website: www.uselessmaps.yolasite.com
Contact: uselessmaps@hotmail.com

A life in design and illustration, returned to painting 2000 to discover my abstract style.

Location: Folkestone
Website: www.iandavidbaker.com
Contact: mail@iandavidbaker.com

I take my inspiration from the ever changing light and colours around the Kentish coast, which never fail to give me new and exciting ideas.

Location: Folkestone
Website: www.valeries-art.com
Contact: dbkb_74@fastmail.fm

Born in Kent 1952, my life changed direction in 2002 when I put behind me some thirty years of working as an art director/illustrator to study sculpture. I completed my BA at Christ Church Canterbury in 2006. In 2007 I became artist-in-residence, student then tutor at the Cyprus College of Art.

In 2006 I was principally a stone carver and maker of measured life drawing.
Now I work with stone, wood, twigs, kebab sticks and colour.

My drawing too has changed from painstakingly detailed illustrations to more instinctive oil pastels. I use them as stubs, almost my fingers…it feels like I am carving in colour. More often than not these drawings are inspired by and derived from mythology, ancient archaeology and dreams.

Currently living and working in the Creative Quarter, Folkestone, Kent.

Location: Folkestone
Website: www.johnsims.yolasite.com
Contact: jscyprus@hotmail.co.uk

Jim Lockey is an artist. Using mainly video and text, his work examines notions of authenticity and of value in art objects.
Jim was born in 1987. He lives and works in Kent. He graduated with a BA Hons in Fine Art from The University For The Creative Arts in 2009. He is currently studying at the UCA for a Masters Degree in Fine Art.

Jim is a co-founder and editor of Duck & Cover magazine and is regularly published there-in. He works as a graduate teaching assistant.

Location: Canterbury | Folkestone
Website: www.jimlockey.co.uk
Contact: jim_lockey@hotmail.co.uk