Phoenix Brighton Open Studios 2016

Stunning open studios at Phoenix Brighton as part of the Brighton Festival.

We went along thinking we’d be there about half an hour and staggered out three and a half hours later having seen some wonderful art and had some great conversations!

Almost too many favourites to mention! We headed first for our friend Eve Shpeherd’s studio. She produces wonderful sculptures and it was great to see works in progress in the studio as we usually only see her finished works at her open house. We had a long chat about a classical head she was working on and about how it had been commissioned and how she hoped to develop it from its current neat classical form.

I was delighted to find a photographer whose work I’d seen earlier in the week at the Sony World Photography Awards, Denise Felkin, whose current series of pictures looks at women who have not had children. I’ve attached a picture of her work to this post. They are lovely caring pictures. She was kind enough to give me a copy of one of the photographs as the only person who had come in and mentioned the Sony award!

I had a great conversation with John Kelly, a photographer who had done work with the British Antarctic Expedition and I’m a bit of a Scott/Shackleton geek! Also lots of chat with Natalie Papamichael who had been copying work by Artemisia Gentileschi and Caravaggio and them developing the image into a more contemporary one. I loved her copy of the Gentileschi self-portrait which is one of my favourite picture alongside her own self-portrait based on it.

You can see why it took us so long!

Closed 8 May 2016

 

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