Chantal, from a young age, apprenticed under her mother Hannah Paine, an established ceramicist and fine artist in South Africa. She was mentored since childhood, developing her unique style and approach to her artistic expression.
Chantal received further tutorship under Pranoto Ahmad Raji a well established artist in Ubud, Bali. This is where she practiced for three years developing her grasp of the human form.
Now based in Minster Lovell, Oxfordshire, Chantal is an artist who uses art therapy as a way to express emotion as well as cope with struggles surrounding mental health. She celebrates the female form through contemporary expressionism.
Themes in her work include connection, self discovery, feminism, mental illness and healing. Each piece captures a moment or series of exploration, the most prevalent being the underwater series.
The water has become a place of contemplation an underwater human scape exploring the nature of what it means to live neurodivergent, peace and fear, anxiety and stillness. A sense of being surrounded by the infinite is captured in her work.
Her Fire series in contrast captures the manic phase, creativity, passion but also conflict and rebellion. What does it mean to really be alive, being ignited by inspiration, fighting for a cause!
These contrasting ideas engage on the canvas with texture and form, She illustrates the play between hard and soft, static and perpetual movement, creating interest and tension in her paintings.
Jessica Ormerod is a textile artist specialising in embroidery and quilt making.
Her embroideries explore ideas around ageing, love, motherhood and being a woman. She particularly enjoys representing designs around anatomy and botany - flora, fauna and animals.
Jessica works in London and Oxford and can be found cursing her cats, dogs and children while stitching in her garden.
I am a collage artist based in Jericho, Oxford. All my work is cut and glued by hand - no digital - as I enjoy the material process of flipping through books and magazines for source material and inspiration, slicing images, then splicing them together in unexpected combinations.
I started off juxtaposing just two or three images together but, over the past year, my work has become more complex, assembling many smaller images into a single arrangement. I enjoy working with this level of intricacy and the idea that viewers might be drawn in by tiny, surprising details lurking around the piece makes me smile!
As an art historian, many of my ideas and compositions are rooted in the traditions of art history; a Dutch seventeenth century memento mori or a grand manner portrait, for example. I then subvert the concept by introducing contemporary imagery and references to popular culture; I like to add a note of humour, strangeness, and whimsy, even if a work has a more serious underlying message.