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5 Female Artists to Watch this Spring

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Henrietta Corbett at The Biscuit Factory's Spring Exhibition 2018

Can you name five women artists? Many can’t. If you can, it probably takes you longer to think of five female artists than five male artists. Women have never been treated equally within the art world, and today they remain underrepresented and undervalued in museums, galleries and auction houses. “The imbalance is systemic, and exists not just in the enormous gaps that are evident in the collections of publicly funded institutions. It is also perpetuated by some of biggest commercial galleries that operate in the UK and internationally.” Hannah Ellis-Peterson, Guardian, 2017.

This Women’s History Month we are highlighting the wide range of female  artists in our collection and challenging our visitors to name #5WomenArtists across our social media channels. This spring we take a closer look at five emerging and established female artists producing some of the most interesting work this season.

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 1. Henrietta Corbett

Original paintings by Henrietta Corbett at The Biscuit Factory.

'Green Queen', acrylic on perspex, £225 & 'Horse with Tree', acrylic on perspex, £225.

Henrietta Corbett is based in Leicestershire and studied a Fine Art Degree at the School of Art, Wolverhapmton Polytechnic, where she specialised in Sculpture and Print and was taught by Anish Kapoor and Nicola Hicks, both of whom had an enormous impact on her as an art student.

Henrietta has, over the years, won many prestigious awards for her innovative works and her clever use of colour and line, the former gaining her the George Pickard Award from the Leicester Society of Artists (2010), the Printmakers Printmaker Award from Printfest (2010) and AA2A Artists of the Year Award (2014).

The rural landscapes of her home county of North Leicestershire and the coastal region of South West Ireland are the inspiration for her memorable imagery. The landscape markings made by animal tracks, man’s machinery and weather erosion have influenced her approach to the making of both paintings and prints. They all lend their patterns to abstract interpretation of landscape shapes, and documenting these, sometimes very subtle ‘scars’ on the land is something that she is continually fascinated by. Henrietta’s prints, sculpture and paintings are full of textures, simple forms and totemic creatures. Her images recall animals carved into chalk hills or on cave walls, and her bold compositions and clever use of line demonstrate an artist with great skill and talent.

Henrietta’s distinctive sculpture, paintings and prints have been gallery favourites over recent years and this spring season she returns with a new collection of large scale carborundum prints and acrylic on perspex paintings.

'Llama with Bridges', acrylic on perspex, £225 & 'Peacock on Green', acrylic on perspex, £225. 

2. June Berry

This season, we welcome celebrated painter June Berry to our gallery for the first time. 94 year old Berry studied painting at the Slade School of Fine Art, London and has had a distinguished career in watercolours, oils and etchings. Showing an interest in people and their daily lives, much of Berry’s work offers glimpses in to village life in rural France or on to the streets and parks of South London where she lives. Her paintings provide quiet moments of amusement, sympathy, amazement or delight.June Berry at The Biscuit Factory.

'A Secret Pool', oil on board, £2,250 & 'A Couple of Rows of Leeks', oil on board, £3,000

Her work is included in collections of HM the Queen, the British Government Art Collection, the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, the National Museum of Wales, the Royal West of England Permanent Collection, the Graphothek, Berlin, Germany and the All Union Society of Bibliophiles, Moscow, Russia. She is also a Member of the Royal Watercolour Society, the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, the New English Art Club and is a Royal West of England Academician.

Her accolades have included three prizes at the Mall Galleries, London, first prize at the Whitworth Art Gallery in 1987 for watercolour and the Saint Cuthbert's Mill prize for watercolour at the RWA in 1991.

 

3. Jennifer Watt

Jennifer Watt was born in Dumfries and graduated at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee. She lived and worked in Lincolnshire for 27 years before returning to her home near Thornhill, Dumfries and Galloway in 2000. Her sculptural work consists of pieces in stone, cement and Limited Edition work in cast in bronze and resin. 

Jennifer Watt with a collection of her work, photographed by Colin Hattersley.

A great deal of Jennifer's work has been inspired by the long shadows of the South of France and the natural organic forms found in the surrounding landscape. Moved by simple forms that are void of any unnecessary components, Jennifer strives to create sculpture which is sincere to its form, material and surface.

Jennifer has exhibited regularly at Visual Arts Scotland in Edinburgh where she won The Powderhall Bronze Award in 2007. She's also exhibited at The Society of Scottish Artists and The Royal Glasgow Institute winning The Inverarity One to One Travel Award in 2010, The Paisley Art Institute winning The West College Scotland Award for Sculpture 2014 and The By Distinction Art Award in 2015.

'The Walk', bronze resin, £850 & 'Sunseeker', bronze resin, £1,500.

4. Janet Melrose

Janet Melrose RSW lives and works in Perthshire, Scotland. Janet studied Fine Art Drawing and Painting at Edinburgh College of Art, graduating in 1987. She has exhibited extensively in Scotland, London and New York. Her work has been exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy, the Royal Society of Scottish Watercolourists, the Scottish Society of Artists and Visual Arts Scotland. It is held by collections including Flemings Bank Holdings, the Bonham Hotel, Royal Air Force, the Lints Partnership SSC and the Festival Fringe Society.

Janet Melrose in her studio.

Janet Melrose in her studio, 2017

Janet has always been interested in nature and the way our lives are affected by it. She makes drawings of plants, birds, animals and insects which live in her surrounding area and she is acutely aware of the fragile balance in which we all exist. Her watercolour paintings are characterised by an intuitive, whimsical approach to mark making. Janet's recent work embraces abstraction. Lines and arrows are used to describe flight paths and movements of animals whilst branches of leafless trees seem to extend into sprawling bird nests, as if seen in dreams of winter walks in forests. The meandering branches and paths of Janet's paintings all point towards the earth and its cycles through abundance and scarcity. Symbols gleaned from Neolithic and Bronze Age burial sites, often hidden in the midst of gathered branches, speak of fertility and fecundity in nature. Her paintings show nature to be a sacred space, full of connections in life cycles and timelines that interweave and eventually fracture. 

Field Marks by Janet Melrose

'Field Marks', watercolour on gesso panel, £1,750

5. Rosa Luetchford

London based painter Rosa Luetchford recently graduated from Wimbledon College of Art with a degree in Fine Art Painting. Prior to this she studied at Accademia di Belle Arti in Bologna.

Rosa Luetchford in her studio

Rosa Luetchford in her studio, 2017

Rosa's recent work comments on the forgotten female artists, throughout history to the present day. Luetchford employs an academic style of painting that plays on a traditional depiction of the female subject, with references to icon paintings. Her figures are often conjoined from the waist up, joining them in symbiosis. Her abstracted bodies clash with an intimate portrayal of the faces of her subjects, acting as a meeting point for traditional and contemporary painting styles. Although her subjects’ bodies are united, their gazes are their own.

The paintings Rosa has selected for our Spring Exhibition are all quite different. They are all pieces with individual processes and ideas behind them. Victoria and Chilly is of two artists Rosa studied with, she painted their faces first and then created the rest of the piece in a similar manner to her mono-prints. It was important that they appeared connected but also as individual people.

"Every piece has an imitative portrayal of the face but then there are abstracted elements making up the surrounding areas. The abstraction acts as a way to manipulate the narrative of the works. I often like to create characters in my pieces, whether that's by altering the model’s original identity by putting a wig on them like Marshian Man, or physically drawing a suit onto the canvas like To Wear a Suit", Rosa Luetchford, March 2018.

'Three Women', oil on canvas, SOLD & 'The Room In Marrakech', oil on canvas, 2016

 

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View and buy from the collections of our featured artists online or in gallery in our Spring Exhibition. Find our more and browse our current collections here.

Get involved and find out more about International Women's History Month here.

Follow the #5WomenArtists social media campaign throughout March 2018 and remember to tweet your own favourites!