KIM ATKINSON Kim Atkinson was born in Bath in 1962. Following her BA in Fine Art at Cheltenham School of Art she went on to study for a MA in Natural History Illustration at the Royal College of Art, London. Her early childhood was spent living on Bardsey Island where her parents farmed. She now lives with her husband and her son on the Lleyn Peninsula. Her subjects, mainly birds, insects and plants within the landscape context, are assimilated by way of observational drawings and notes made outside, in and near her garden, or on cliffs and coves of the headland. The intimate world of nature in a hedgerow or groupings of birds interacting on the shore, for example, form the beginnings of ideas for pictures. Some subjects are developed in the studio, where various printmaking techniques are often combined to make limited edition prints or monoprints, where layers of oil-based inks are printed off perspex sheets to build a surface rich in pattern and texture to find an equivalent which seeks to celebrate an encounter with nature. SARAH THWAITES Born in 1959, Sarah Thwaites trained at Wimbledon School of Art and then Goldsmiths College. She has been living and working in Wales since 1987. Sarah has had numerous solo exhibitions, and has been included in many group shows, including The Discerning Eye, at the Mall Galleries in London and Martin Tinney Gallery in Cardiff. The National Museum and Gallery of Wales, Cardiff has recently purchased Sarah’s work for the national collection. She says of her work; ‘My work is a personal response to landscapes discovered through time and exploration. A fleeting moment captured from a glimpsed scene or the essence of a place distilled through multiple layers of texture and mark.’ VIVIENNE WILLIAMS Born in Swansea in 1955, Vivienne Williams took an M.A. in ‘The Literary Response to the Visual Arts’ at Reading University, before travelling and teaching worldwide. In Australia between 1980 and 1982 she took drawing classes, subsequently returning to Britain to study and work at a Buddhist College until 1990. It was at this point that Vivienne became a full time artist, since when she has exhibited with increasing success. Since 1991 she has shown regularly with Martin Tinney Gallery, both in Cardiff and at the major London art fairs. Vivienne says of her work: ‘Colour is the most important thing in my work – in the bold and rather exuberant flower paintings and the more contemplative still life pictures of pots, bowls, jugs and fruit. The elements within a composition are often rearranged and painted over many times. In this way layers are built up until ordinary paper takes on the appearance and weight of old leather. The surface texture is energetically worked and reworked, scratched, sanded and stained. At any moment during this process there is an opportunity for a painting to emerge.’
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