Linda Brown

I am very pleased to be exhibiting here at the first Flamstead Arts Festival as part of the centenary celebrations.

In this display my work includes fused and sand-cast glass alongside original limited edition prints.

I live and work in St Albans, having moved here in 1975 as a fine-art graduate to study the postgraduate in Art Therapy at St Albans College of Art. Since then I have further trained in art teaching, counselling and Jungian Analysis.

My current work both as an Artist and Jungian Analyst explores many interconnecting themes, such as the alchemical process of transformation and the synthesis of opposites. A recent theme emerging out of my work is about something limitless. This limitless feeling emerges in the glass work in the sense of looking into the depths as seen in the glass seascapes.

Sometimes I am inspired by a journey, or exploring difference, for example East/West. Another influence is Jung’s idea of ‘The Night Sea Journey,’ an immersion into the depths of the unconscious.

I have exhibited my work in London, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire, including Camden Arts Centre, Obsidian Gallery, Mardleybury Gallery in Datchworth,the Nudetincan Gallery and the Collective Gallery in St. Albans.

‘Ancient Kingdoms’, one of my original collagraph prints was used for the front cover of Design4 Life magazine. In 2018 I was one of the artists selected for ‘All can be Frida’, at the Espacio Gallery in London. This exhibition showed works influenced by the artist Frida Kahlo. The print I exhibited linked through the themes of psychological and physical suffering.

Linda Brown Fine Art Printmaking and Glass Art.

Virginia Corbett

Virginia trained as a JMI teacher working in schools in London and Hertfordshire before taking a Fine Art degree at St Albans School of Art (now the University of Hertfordshire).

She has exhibited widely and her work is held in some public and many private collections. She exhibited at the RA Summer Exhibition. Virginia made a successful show of paintings from one day’s drawing from the bridge of a container ship as it passed through Suez Canal. Her last 2 solo shows were at Gallery 8, Duke St. St James.

She enjoys creating floral displays for church and Cathedral, with as much garden and farm offerings as possible. This spills over in 2 dimensional form to the studio where there is usually a body of both landscape and flower paintings on the go. The studio is a converted dairy on her farm in Hertfordshire. The space is just as well as ‘creativity can get messy’. Her semi abstract style is fairly free but locked in a reality.

Virginia also draws and makes prints from the above and also the model. The expressive paintings are usually outcomes of explorations in all these forms.

A website has now been superseded by Instagram @ginnycorb. She promises she is working on making better use of this this.

Haydn Dickenson

HAYDN, the unique moniker by which Haydn Dickenson is known and marketed, is a fascinating and prolific abstract artist.

With more than 150 works to his name and a large, growing portfolio for sale, HAYDN’s work exists in private collections worldwide.
 
A multi-faceted creator who is also interested in photography and writing, cooking and growing his own food, HAYDN had a notable former career as a classical concert pianist.
 
Collectors of HAYDN’s work recognise an extremely personal style and a passion that erupts through every mark he commits to canvas. His dynamic and energetic paintings demonstrate a searching and fertile imagination.
 
His love of nature, interest in mysticism and psychology, and an all-encompassing celebration of Life are conveyed abundantly in his work, together with a deep, even dark introspection.
 
The artist has always signed his paintings with his first name, HAYDN, one originating from ancestral reverence for the great 18th-century composer Franz Joseph Haydn.
 
HAYDN is represented by iOLOGIES Fine Art.

Roy Goodman

I grew up in North London in the postwar years, when colour was muted and science was riding high. I was good at drawing at school but also at lots of other subjects, and following parental advice instead of going to art school I became a research scientist. I’d like to say it was planned, but in truth I just drifted. I did, however, paint in my spare time and over the years I taught myself the basics.

My early cv includes one first prize in the Brook Bond primary school competition for a painting of “teatime”, one painting on Adrian Hill’s Sketch Club on BBC tv and one painting in the Woman’s Hour/Radio Times “Summertime” exhibition at the Tate (Britain)!

I have shown work in several galleries, mainly in Cornwall, for over 40 years:
Mid-Cornwall Galleries St Austell • Beside the Wave Gallery Falmouth (Chelsea Show, Affordable Art Fair) • Roundhouse Gallery Sennen • Great Atlantic Mapworks St Just and Falmouth (now closed) • Wickhambreaux Gallery (now closed) • Fowey River Gallery • Veryan Gallery • La Bogetta Galleria, Castellina in Chianti • Painting held in House of Lords • Sky Portrait contestant.

Projects/exhibitions:
Short list, John Moores Prize, 2018 • Long list Jacksons Art Prize 2018 • Contestant SkyArts Portrait artist of the year 2018 • Solo Show, Falmouth Polytechnic Institute 2017 • Menier Gallery 2017 • Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Art Open Exhibition, Glasgow, 2017 • Pay and Display exhibition, Centrespace, Bristol 2017 • Painting of the day: British Contemporary Painting three times over 2017 to 2019 • Royal West of England Academy Open Exhibition, Bristol 2016 and 2017 • Penwith Society of Artists mixed shows 2015, 2016 and 2017 • Five Ways, with 4 other artists at Penwith Gallery, St Ives, 2016 • Angle of Repose Photographic Exhibition at the Wheal Martyn Museum, St Austell. 2013

Julia Ramsay

An experienced local artist with a BA (Hons) Fine Art degree, and a qualified teacher of Art at secondary level, Julia is driven by vibrant colours and the vast possibilities in textures and landscapes, encapsulated in oils. On her many dog walks in the local area, Julia is constantly inspired by the simplicity in nature and everyday surroundings.

Julia has undertaken many commissions from the Swiss mountains, Suffolk coastline to the Balearic seas and can work to a bespoke size and budget. She works from her garden studio in Harpenden as well as on location.

Dione Verulam

Sussex born artist Dione Verulam began her career working alongside her mother. Trading as Verona Stencilling, they looked after private clients, interior decorators, hotels, restaurants, and several churches. Dione studied painting under a succession of art masters over a period of 15 years, and later founded the Gorhambury Group.

Nowadays, Dione focuses on making collages. The tearing, cutting and laying of one coloured shape beside another gives her the freedom she enjoys. Her work is informed by family life, foreign lands, and the people she meets along the way. Over the years, Dione has designed carpets, Corten steel cutouts, painted and stencilled screens, stencilled curtains, cushions and a weathervane. Dione’s enthusiasm for the opera further influences her artwork, notably Richard Wagner’s legendary Ring cycle, scenes from which inspire her collages, lithographs and linocuts.

Dione Verulam is represented by Cricket Fine Art. 

Esther Wragg

Fragile Earth – a series of mixed media artworks on paper

These were made during the intense period of lockdown during Covid, when the skies were clear of contrails and we could hear birdsong clearly. The natural world seemed to expand and breathe unhindered through these troubled times. With the streets clear of traffic and the human world quiet, at last there was time to sit still and observe the simple things. 

This was a time of reflection, a brief period of climate restoration and a recognition of the fragility of ourselves within our beautiful world so easily broken and damaged by us. The Fragile Earth series was made in response to this unique time. 

Esther Wragg trained as a textile designer graduating from the Royal College of Art in 1982. Her use of collage and mixed media result from her interest in texture and mark making. The natural world is a recurring theme in her work, from her wood and bone sculptures to her painted paper pieces. Most often she observes the world through her camera lens.

”My father was a photographer so it’s always seemed quite natural to be taking photographs. Where many artists sketch, I tend to take notes, record and observe with my camera collecting images that inspire or might be useful to my work.“

MA Royal College of Art, London 1980-82
BA (Hons) Textile Design, Liverpool 1977-80

Lives and works in St Albans, keen ‘wild’ gardener, photographer, husband, 3 children, 6 grandchildren and a dog!

Stephen Wragg

Educated in Edinburgh, Stephen Wragg’s initial influences developed out of the Scottish painterly tradition, before his studies took him to London (BA Fine Art Hons: Chelsea School of Art 1980) where he began to focus on the unselfconscious and informal visual language of the street.

His current work is a reaction to an era of conflict and chaotic post-truth where sirens, false signals, and contradictory narratives clamour for ascendency.