ArtMANAC
The Artmanac Selection
THE
ISSUE #4 2024
Sophie Wardle's Prints and Practices
the big reveal
The Art of Clowning Around
the quirks of tweedy
christmas gift guide
Broadway's star
Spotlight on Pink Harrison
champions of art
Cheltenham Literature Festival
Sophie Wardle's world
Pink Harrison's passions
Broadway Arts Festival - Open 2024
Art meets literature
'VERMIN STREET’ BY ELLA KEELING ellakeeling.cargo.site @ellakart
Musings on art
@theartmanacmag
IN THIS ISSUE
Editor's letter
ince Issue #3 was published we’ve had the pleasure of featuring on Cotswolds Radio’s Culture Club weekend show and being able to further highlight the outstanding artists, art centres and creative initiatives we’ve featured since The Artmanac was born earlier this year. We’re delighted with the reception the magazine has had and the opportunity it offers to explore local talent. For this issue, our last of 2024, we visited Pink Harrison at her Broadway studio for insights into her life in the arts and a poignant new project. We also spoke to the powerhouse of creativity that is Sophie Wardle and had a glorious ‘to me, to you’ with Tweedy the Clown, soon to be published author and returning to The Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham, to entertain audiences this panto season. After celebrating its 75th anniversary this autumn, we reflect on the importance of art-themed events at the annual Cheltenham Literature Festival. We also followed the Broadway Arts Festival’s Open Art Competition and spoke to Festival Director Alison Braithwaite and artist Lynn Edward, winner of the Visitors’ Choice Prize. We have a selection of affordable artworks from local independent galleries to tempt you in our Christmas Gift Guide. Finally, a shout out to our cover star Tilly Flory, thank you so much for allowing us to use ‘Be Still’. We love Tilly’s mix of modesty and determination not to mention the skill she brings to her wildlife pieces. Wishing you all a happy end to 2024 and thank you for your ongoing support. Stay in touch with us @theartmanacmag Emma Bovill, Editor
Editor's Letter
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The clown you can't tie down
The Artmanac Christmas Gift Guide
e tried and we failed to get an interview with Tweedy, a fitting irony for the clown so adept at entertaining audiences as the star of local favourite Giffords Circus, at The Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham, for the annual Christmas pantomime and, this summer, in Tweedy’s Massive Circus, his own show. We should clarify. Tweedy was friendly and keen to chat over email, but the life of a clown, it seems, is as dynamic as the shows he steals. He has been to the Edinburgh Fringe and back this year, is preparing for the panto and has written a book Tweedy: The Clown Who Lost His Nose, illustrated by Daniel Duncan and out in 2025. So what to do. We considered contacting his trusty sidekick Keith the iron for the inside take on Gloucestershire’s, and increasingly the nation’s, favourite clown. We considered creating a poor substitute rival act in his hometown of Stroud to tempt him to outperform, or at the very least popping to Made in Stroud to buy a mug featuring Eddie the Eagle and Giffords Circus founder, the late Nell Gifford. Perhaps it'll just be glorious delayed gratification. Tweedy returns to The Everyman Theatre at the end of November to appear in Aladdin and, while we might avoid the antics aimed at the front row, we’ll be there. In September he was busy visiting the kitchen at Cheltenham Open Door on Alstone Lane which the pantomime supports, making use of the stainless steel props. Awarded the British Empire Medal for his dedication to the arts in the 2022 New Year Honours list, Tweedy spends his time promoting other acts, including The Revel Pucks contemporary circus and quick-change artist Arturo Brachetti, alongside his own shows. When he took a break from the Giffords entourage for Tweedy’s Massive Circus in 2024, he still went back to visit his old friends in the big top. We may not have been able to pin Tweedy, AKA Alan Digweed, down this time, but in a way we’re rather tickled to find him so impishly elusive. It makes us wonder what he could be up to, which based on any performance we’ve ever seen of Tweedy to date could be, well, anything. We’ll keep trying Keith on an old rotary dial phone in the meantime. @tweedyclown
PHOTO COURTESY OF THOUSAND WORD MEDIA
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k let’s state the obvious. There are many straightforward approaches to encounter artists including open studios, pop up exhibitions and private views. Our previous ‘musings’ have focused on the talented creatives found this way and the rich conversations had. There are also some weird and wonderful ways too. Offering a seat at my table at independent coffee shop Loganberry in Stroud, enthusiastically recommended by the nearby Salt Bakehouse, introduced me to renowned equestrian artist and sculptor Tristram Lewis who was, it turns out, on the hunt for props for his latest composition. He had already collected a few. An encounter by the hair dryers in a swimming pool changing room in Cheltenham means I now have a greetings card by Vicky Jones on my shelf of her painting 'The Cyclamen and The Poinsettia'. I admired her for approaching me, inviting me to choose a design and asking me to pay for it. I’ve since bumped into her several times, including at speed on a local run. More connections incidentally involving hair introduced me to Tilly Flory, who captures wildlife in monochrome as seen on our cover. When we first spoke, she was considering ways to get into the art world. Just a year after becoming a full-time artist, she has since had her first solo exhibition, at Heacham Manor in Norfolk, and generously shares advice and insights from her artistic journey on Instagram. On holiday in Devon this summer (yes, we do take a break), a member of The Artmanac team spotted Wiltshire-based artist Ella Keeling on a quayside. We were delighted to later see her included in the Small But Mighty exhibition celebrating printmaking at the Bankside Gallery, London, in September with her screenprinted book ‘Vermin Street’. Creative hub Atelier8, just minutes from the magazine’s engine room in Stow-on-the-Wold, has brought Nick de St Croix and his ‘preponderance of straight lines’ into The Artmanac orbit alongside photographer Claire Carroll and her Japanese red crowned cranes. And so it goes on. You can go to any number of galleries and exhibitions, but an artist encountered by happenstance, or through warm connections always holds a special place. @tristramlewis @vickyjones_art @tilly_flory @ellakeart @atelier_8_stow @clairelouisecarroll
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editor's
ARTIST TILLY FLORY tilly-flory.co.uk @tilly_flory
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he jutting head of an adult polar bear evoking the Svalbard monarchs in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials and the oozing centres of a precariously balanced trio of jam doughnuts were among the artworks which captured the attention of the judges at Broadway Arts Festival’s Open Art Competition. The competition is part of the arts charity’s annual line up of events which also includes a photography competition, the summer festival itself, including the Great Broadway Paint-Off, and year-round outreach projects. Judges awarded prizes across six categories for the Open with visitors to the exhibition of finalists also casting their vote. Over 1,500 art lovers took in artworks by 150 finalists at Theatrebarn, Bretforton, whittled down from the 580 entries, from 27 September to 6 October. ‘The bar was exceptionally high this year with a wonderful resulting mix of young artists aged just 16+, hobby artists and those making a professional living from their work,’ explained Alison Braithwaite, Festival Director. ‘It is a real pleasure to showcase such amazing talent,’ added Alison. ‘We sold a third of all pieces in the exhibition, which is a record for us in the history of the competition. We are already planning next year’s competition with additional prize categories thanks to offers from new sponsors.’ The Visitors’ Choice Prize was taken by Lynn Edward’s ‘Jump’, an oil on canvas capturing the delight and frustration of a small boy contemplating jumping frogs. ‘It was marvellous to return to my first love, painting children,’ says Lynn. ‘There is something so intoxicating about their innocent joy in the simplest of things.’ The prize is perhaps the most coveted of all the categories at the Broadway Arts Festival’s Open Art Competition. It was awarded to prolific Stow-on-the-Wold artist Lindy Allfrey in 2023 for her portrait of transformative coach, neuroscientist and art facilitator Kariné Gazarian of Artful Mindscape, also in Stow. The Open Art Competition main prize was judged by Malcolm Rodgers, former Deputy Director of the National Portrait Gallery, and award-winning artist Tushar Sabale, elected member of The British Plein Air Painters, fitting for Broadway’s links with John Singer Sargent. They chose Marian Buckman’s oil ‘Old Grain Barge on the Severn’, depicting a brooding disused vessel in silty waters, as the overall winner. Broadway gallerist Gary Thompson of Broadway Contemporary Art and art dealer and festival founder John Noott, who lives in the house where Sargent created ‘Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose’ (as explored in Issue #3 of The Artmanac), also gave their expertise to the competition. Mixed media ‘Loving The New Front Door’ by Claire Henley won the Local Artist Prize and ‘Oranges & Limes’ by Tracy Love secured the Watercolour Prize. For a full list of winners and information on next year’s Broadway Arts Festival, which runs from 6-15 June 2025 with over 80 events, visit broadwayartsfestival.com. @broadwayartsfestival
BROADWAY ARTS FESTIVAL
‘JUMP’ BY LYNN EDWARD @edward_art_studio
art news
‘THROUGH THE WEALD’ BY FRANCINE BROWN @francinebrownart
A portrait of Pink
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PINK AT WORK IN HER STUDIO PHOTO COURTESY OF CHARLOTTE BROWN
urn down the snicket,’ explains artist Pink Harrison, describing the way to her home on the outskirts of Broadway. Something about her choice of language, coupled with navigating a low wooden arch and being greeted by a fringe of wisteria overhanging her studio, made me conscious of my surroundings as I approached. Her double height studio, once home to her mother’s pottery and part of a converted silk mill, is orderly and calm, with a large window giving on to a pastoral view of recently shorn sheep. Three walls are taken up with her framed paintings and prints, there is a shelf of greetings cards (categorised in individual pigeonholes) and a visitors book lies invitingly open. The space looks ready for, or having recently recovered from, a curated exhibition, but Pink later explains she rarely has people there in large groups. In fact, it took a snowstorm for her to host an impromptu solo ‘show’, inviting local friends to her home to enjoy a glass of gluhwein while enjoying her art before crunching their way home. ‘I’m open hearted, but I’m solitary,’ she says, adding, perhaps by way of explanation for the currently empty easel, that when she paints, she focusses completely on the task. ‘I put some music on and don’t take any calls. I’m in it for the day. I just love it in here and there’s always something to do.’ Working mainly in watercolour, but more recently in oils, Pink’s artworks include still life, landscapes and the features of buildings. Although detailed, they leave the viewer with room to read their own sense of place into the scenes, which have a continental and Mediterranean influence thanks to years spent living in Rome and, increasingly, trips to Sardinia. ‘I love Italy more than words can say. Sometimes I feel I’m half Italian,’ she eulogises. She prefers to visit Sardinia in September when ‘the light is softer but the blues are bluer’ than in high summer. ‘You think you’re going overboard but you’re not.’ She was introduced to the island by Rebecca Lewis Lalatta who lives and works there and the pair have collaborated on a series of delicately designed sarongs together featuring Pink’s artworks. It’s all the more remarkable that Pink never expected to be an artist at all. She trained at ballet school, and spent a season with the National Youth Theatre, but fate introduced her aged 16 to Michael Harrison, and it would change her life forever. ‘It was not by design that I became a painter,’ she reflects, and for a time she pursued acting and modelling. Pink learnt from Michael, a talented self-taught artist for whom Pink would become a muse and later marry, and from books, also taking inspiration from the style of former Broadway resident John Singer Sargent among many others. ‘Sargent is a big influence – he stirred me,’ says Pink, who enjoys working en plein air like Sargent as much as in her studio. Rather than relying on photographs, which she believes don’t accurately capture the essence of a place, she makes watercolour studies on her travels, or pencil sketches when it’s too hot (causing the watercolour paint to dry too fast), to develop into further compositions back in her Cotswolds studio. ‘I come back with my mind’s eye still full of the glorious colours and with paintings in my head to get down.’ Her choice of medium once in the studio depends on her mood and the subject matter. ‘Sometimes I come in and I think “Today I’m going to do an oil”,’ she divulges. ‘I love the smell of my oil paints and getting stuck in and mucky. Painting in oil is less pressure and more forgiving, you can keep working on it, go away and come back. Watercolour needs my full continued concentration.’ Pink spent several years living in Scotland and credits the challenge of painting, against the clock, a fresh langoustine that needed cooking before it spoilt, with opening up her watercolour style. She has recently applied this to translating the fluidity of dancers in the rehearsal room into pieces both soft and dynamic, returning to her ballet roots after, as she describes, shutting down that part of her life to pursue being an artist. Another project is also brewing. A visit to Pink’s studio has two noticeable anomalies on the wall. A portrait of a young man with eyes that have you reaching for Van Gogh’s piercing self-portraits, and of a young woman with plaited hair in timeless dress reminiscent of the era of the Broadway Colony of Creatives explored at the nearby Broadway Museum & Art Gallery (as featured in Issue #3 of The Artmanac). The young woman depicted is Pink, painted in oil by Michael in her 20s. The young man is Michael himself in 1978, then aged 30. He tragically died just five years later. Pink exhibited alongside him at his last exhibition in 1983 and held her first solo show, at the Dormy House hotel, the following year. Michael’s self-portrait is nestled in a nook, unframed, the stretched canvas now slightly wayward at the edges, and quietly dominant. ‘His eyes never leave you,’ says Pink, and it’s true. Pink is building a head of steam to stage a retrospective of his work in a sensitive and relevant venue and is working to produce an accompanying book. ‘In his short life he had a lot of followers and collectors worldwide,’ she asserts. ‘He deserves to be better known than he is.’ Passing away in the early 1980s, Michael didn’t benefit from the amplification of social media or the legacy of a digital footprint. As well as reframing his artworks, she wants to reposition Michael as an artist. While conscious initially of this pulling on her painting time, she finds more and more it is adding rather than taking away from her art. ‘It’s opening a seam of creativity in me,’ she reveals. ‘It’s made me go through all his sketches again and I'm cleaning and revarnishing his oil paintings.’ She is understandably emotional, but passionate and committed when discussing the endeavour. Commissions and the sale (occasionally bittersweet) of her original paintings also keep her more than busy. Prints of her Broadway scenes are on show at Broadway Deli and Broadway Museum & Art Gallery and she is conscious of the line between what the artist wants to paint and what the viewer likes to see. ‘People in general like to identify with somewhere,’ she says. ‘But colours are so representative and can evoke memories and connections with other places.’ ‘The best type of commission is when someone says, “I love what you do”, which gives you your flow,’ she muses. ‘You can keep your heart in it without being constrained.’ She is as invested in the personal idiosyncrasies of the creative process as understanding that artists have to make a living. ‘Having prints on display in Broadway is a good thing,’ she affirms. A tour of her studio ends with a wander, via the kitchen (once home to a kiln and where her mother’s ceramic jugs and cups now hang), into her riverside garden which is recovering from recent flooding. Her husband Alistair is curating the sodden garden and together they decide whether or not an errant rose branch should stay or be lopped off (it’s kept for its pleasing curve). Her idyllic Cotswolds home is as much a sanctuary as her travels are stimulating. ‘I get so immersed in the studio, so I try and step out and come back and look afresh,’ she discloses. I’m unclear whether the easel beckons on my departure, but through the studio door the watercolour sets are open and there is a glass mug of water stained, poetically, pink. pinkharrison.co.uk @pinkharrisonart rebeccainsardinia.com
'THE LYGON ARMS, BROADWAY' BY PINK HARRISON pinkharrison.co.uk @pinkharrisonart
art meets literature
PHOTO COURTESY OF STILL MOVING MEDIA
KATY HESSEL PHOTO COURTESY OF LILY BERTRAND WEBB AND LAURA BROOK
t a Downing Street reception to mark the 75th Cheltenham Literature Festival this October, Co-CEO of Cheltenham Festivals Ian George described access to culture as a human right, as bold a statement as it is a straightforward one. Over 100,000 ticket holders exercised that right, choosing from 400 events over 10 days with themes ranging from burial rites to being human in the age of AI, Beowolf to burlesque. Headline speaker and President of Cheltenham Festivals Judi Dench emphasised the importance of the arts, particularly for children and young people’s development, in her sell-out event. The visual arts play a huge part in the Cheltenham Literature Festival’s line up. Art is intrinsic to the family programme, with children’s authors regularly engaging audiences in live drawing challenges and demonstrations alongside opportunities to create on the fly in The Hush and The Den tents. The giant book covers painted live, in collaboration with Cheltenham Paint Festival (covered in Issue #3), underlined the point. The 2024 adult programme’s art strands covered Gauguin, Van Gogh and Michelangelo, the invention of British art and the birth of Impressionism, but also made a certified effort to unpick perceptions of the art world. These included revelations by Orlando Whitfield, former best friend of art fraudster Inigo Philbrick, in his shocking memoir and Katy Hessel’s mammoth task of rewriting art history from the perspective of female artists. In light of the Festival’s 75th anniversary, Hessel’s talk focused on women artists and artworks that have shaped history since 1949, only a portion of the five centuries she covers in her book The Story of Art Without Men which won the 2022 Waterstones Book of the Year. Focusing on artists including Lee Krasner and Pauline Boty, one of the founders of British Pop Art, her densely packed talk at Cheltenham Town Hall would have felt electrocuting if it weren’t for her passion and conviction. Cheltenham is lucky to have the annual Fresh: Art Fair and initiatives such as Art in the Park, established in 1969, Open Studios and the En Plein Air competitions in the town and nearby (see our interview with recent winner Sophie Wardle). In the absence of a dedicated art festival, these events, and the established presence of art at Cheltenham Literature Festival are a crucial way to engage local audiences and visitors with the visual arts in the area. ‘Art is a much-loved strand of the Festival programme,’ says Emma Whittle, Programming Strategic Lead for Cheltenham Literature Festival and also Cheltenham Science Festival, where the MakerShack was a runaway success this year. ‘Over the years, we've been privileged to welcome the likes of Grayson Perry and Soheila Sokhanvari to Cheltenham, together with a range of leading curators and experts. Collaborating with galleries and museums including the V&A and The British Museum enables us to showcase the best in art publishing and signpost the year ahead for exhibitions across the UK and beyond.’ Art is firmly on the Cheltenham Literature Festival agenda and long may it stay that way. cheltenhamfestivals.org @cheltfestivals
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sophie's world
'LANDLINES' BY SOPHIE WARDLE sophiewardle.com sophie.wardle.art
ophie Wardle is unnecessarily self-deprecating, but so hilarious with it that you don’t want her to stop. She’s also driven and industrious and the heady mix makes her a compelling person to have a conversation with. The former tax advisor turned artist has fully embraced her creative side following a diagnosis of early onset Parkinson’s in 2008. A wild card entry to Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year in 2016 and 2017, participant on the Channel 4 life drawing show Drawers Off in 2022 and one-time contestant on Mastermind, she describes herself as ‘a serial applicant’. ‘It’s one of the things I’m most proud of,’ says Sophie of her appearance on the BBC quiz show in 2017 in which her specialist subject was the art collector and museum founder Peggy Guggenheim. The trick, she says, is to research your subject from scratch. ‘I was still learning on the train up to Manchester for filming,’ she jokes. Sophie’s footprint on the local arts scene is the reason we wanted to interview her for The Artmanac. In the last 12 months she has had a solo show at Sixteen Gallery in Cheltenham, taken part in the Cheltenham Paint Festival and the Great Broadway Paint-Off and won two en plein air competitions at Painswick Rococo Garden and in Cheltenham’s Montpellier Gardens. Now home to the Potthouse Collective, Sophie set up Nau Arts in Leckhampton in 2017, as part of the collaborative element of her Fine Art MA at the University of Gloucestershire (UOG), which acted as a studio and gallery. In turn she has benefited from groups run at other creative centres locally including Art Shape in Brockworth. ‘They were the first place I went to,’ she explains, after her medical diagnosis prompted a pivot to art. Art for All based at the Gas Green Youth and Community Centre (near the UOG Hardwick Campus in Cheltenham) has also been instrumental in her artistic journey. Using their collagraph press during workshops encouraged her to pursue printmaking which she has brought to her en plein air competitions to the delight of onlookers. Sophie spends hours painstakingly creating a design, from sketching the composition to transferring it onto a plate made from the inside of old Tetra Pak® cartons, then using a scalpel to cut out the parts she wants to print before inking the plate. Finally, she uses a handheld card embossing machine, sourced in a charity shop, for the final print. ‘You spend the entire day working up to a final moment,’ she says. ‘It’s like doing art on a tightrope, it’s a big risk but it’s worth it.’ Her investment in the process in the lead up to the big reveal captures the attention of observers. ‘It’s a bit like Russian roulette and you have no idea what it’s going to look like until you’ve done all the work and then had a go at printing,’ she adds. Place is a core element of Sophie’s work and she readily alludes to the beauty of the rose window of St Mary’s church in Charlton Kings where she lives, sharing a work in progress that features it. Her piece 'Drogo' captures Castle Drogo in Devon, while 'Sightlines' and 'Landlines' are more abstracted, allowing the viewer to bring their own experiences to their interpretation. ‘I seem to have hit on something that people like,’ she states simply. She is currently working on a new project centred around inro, traditional Japanese cases for holding small objects which were formerly used as medicine containers. The inspiration comes both from the medication she carries for her Parkinson’s and her desire, at a reflective stage in her life, to distil her belongings, interests and activities. ‘I’m about to start on a programme of re-evaluation, reclamation, recycling and removal of the unnecessary from my life,’ she asserts. ‘I want to renew to fit my future,’ she asserts. ‘I think inro culture and history is an ideal container, real and metaphorical for this exercise.’ It’s a marked moment for the enthusiastic Sophie (who has described herself as an ‘inveterate show off’) to take pause for thought. Sophie is sharing thoughts from the project as it progresses, as well as her poetry, on Instagram and is an artist in residence at the Potthouse Collective. Her prints are available from art-rabble.org/collections/sophie-wardle and via her website. sophiewardle.com @sophie.wardle.art
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PHOTO COURTESY OF TREVOR RAY HART
Jagger Alistair Maddox Oil on canvas 80cm x 80cm £995 Broadway Contemporary Art, Broadway broadwaycontemporary.co.uk @broadwaycontemporaryart
Raspberry Chanel Silvia O’Neill Acrylic on canvas 60cm x 80cm £275 Pink Vintage, Cheltenham @silviaoneill_art @pinkvintagecheltenham
Space Oddity 7 Fiona Parkinson Death’s-head Hawkmoth specimen (sustainably sourced) 17cm x 17cm £395 Park Gallery, Cheltenham parkgallery.co.uk @parkgallery_cheltenham
Animal Glyph X Jon Buck Glazed ceramic 19cm x 18.5cm x 4cm £800 Gallery Pangolin, Stroud gallery-pangolin.com @gallerypangolin
rt can uplift the soul, enliven the home, create conversation and be a prudent investment. Buying art for a loved one, particularly at Christmas, is an opportunity for a highly personal and long-lasting gift, one that will stand out underneath the tree for more than just its size. We’ve chosen a selection of varied artworks from independent art galleries across the Cotswolds that showcase both diverse talent and discerning and passionate curation. All pieces, either original artworks or limited-edition prints, are under £1000 and designed to suit a range of budgets.
Plums in a White Bowl Don Cordery Gouache on collaged paper 38cm x 47cm £425.00 Gallery 9, Northleach gallery9.co.uk @gallery9northleach
the artmanac
Parish Flock Seren Bell Mixed media 47cm x 53cm £850 Fosse Gallery, Stow-on-the-Wold fossegallery.com @fossegallery
Cotswold bales, Wychwood Rupert Aker Oil on canvas 65cm x 105cm £900 The Loovre, Painswick rupertaker.artweb.com @rupertaker
Antelopes Vayreda Canadell Oil on canvas 80cm x 68cm £915 Deco Interiors, Moreton-in-Marsh deco-interiors.com
Back to Black Linda Charles Limited-edition giclee print 110cm x 70cm £995 ArtÓ, Stow-on-the-Wold myarto.co.uk @artostow
The Gift of Art
Still Life Interior Composition Jacqueline Williams Oil on canvas 61cm x 46cm £470 Jubilee Galleries, Cirencester jubileegalleries.com @jubileegalleries