The Hampshire Artists Co-operative

Our Artists

Please see below for The Hampshire Artists Co-operative artists' details and their work.

To contact the Hampshire Artists' Co-operative please email info@hampshireartistscooperative.co.uk or visit our Facebook Page

Penny Adams

Although I have always been a practising artist and have exhibited both locally and abroad, it is only now that I have stopped full time art teaching that I can devote time to my own work.

I am now concentrating on drawing and painting, preferring oils but also mixed media and with a limited palette and contrasting colours. I am also working on woodcuts and wood engraving.

I like the flowing lines and curves of natural form, sometimes contrasting this with elements of geometric lines. The composition of a picture is important to me I am always trying to find the most pleasing arrangement.

I also like the idea of a blurred background, allowing the viewer to make out what they will from the shapes and colours. Thus my work can be both figurative and yet with some abstraction.

Rupert Beswarick-Asser

Rupert's career has encompassed a range of creative interests. Having taken a conventional route through art college, he went on to train in painting conservation. He subsequently taught fine art practice, and later, as a mature student, gained a first-class degree in art history from the University of East Anglia.

His paintings also represent a creative journey. He uses oils, applied in layers of translucent glazes and touches of opaque paint: built up, rubbed away and overlaid again to create rich complexities of depth and colour-making the process as important as the finished artwork.

Partly meditative, partly impressionistic, Rupert aims to infuse his work with a very personal sense of light and mood and atmosphere.

A frequent comment is that Rupert's paintings convey feelings of reflection and tranquillity. Perhaps the time it takes to complete each picture-typically several months, re-working and refining them-is the reason why.

Rupert has exhibited regularly in London, the Home Counties, and South West.

Tozzy Bridger

I am a printmaker, specialising in the intaglio methods etching and drypoint and relief methods of lino-cuts and embossing. I graduated from The University of the West of England in 1993, and have been exhibiting ever since.

I work with materials and ideas drawn directly from nature, having lived in the English countryside most of my life. Nature inspires me emotionally, and I try to create a small space on paper that can capture this emotion for the viewer. The feelings I wish to convey are ones of harmony and quietness whilst still retaining a passion. I am therefore constantly trying to simplify without depersonalizing, using colour and humour to this end. The humour lies in the scraggly forms of wildlife that animate my spaces and this keeps the work personal and intimate.

Returning again and again to images of favourite British birds I am attracted to the shapes and forms of the different species as well as their characters. I am currently experimenting with work combining traditional printmaking methods with digital printmaking. I am interested in using old papers and book plates, incorporating them digitally or through embossed collage.

I have been teaching the craft skills of printmaking for many years at a variety of venues and for all age groups. I run my own regular print classes as well as working with galleries such as The Lightbox in Woking. I believe in an informal approach to teaching to create a relaxed atmosphere for all participants to make the most of their own ideas and creativity.

Ruta Brown

After gaining a BA (Hons) in Fine Art (Sculpture) at West Surrey College of Art and Design in Farnham, Ruta Brown also studied silversmithing before setting up an independent jewellery studio.

Directly manipulating precious metals using hand tools and heat, Ruta Brown has developed a comprehensive personal vocabulary of form and texture. This supports the creation of a distinctive visual language that is expressed in a range of jewellery and small objects.

Drawn to the textural possibilities that can be achieved, Ruta Brown has specialized in the technique of reticulation. Directional heat is applied to forged, folded forms, each piece individually fabricated, in exploration of the structural limits of the metal, mainly sterling silver with 18 carat gold as added decoration. The results are a variety of intricate forms, often also incorporating stones and pearls, details evoking weathered fragments of flotsam, or other marine elements from the shoreline.

Angela Carter

Angela has been a member of the Hampshire Artists Cooperative since it's inception at the Selborne Gallery in 2007.

After training in ceramics at West Surrey College of Art & Design, Angela went to work at Milland Pottery, near Liphook where she has developed a business around producing domestic earthenware pots and running sessions for all ages for people to gain an understanding of the processes involved in making pots - both hand built and wheel thrown. Birthday parties, Hen parties and team building sessions are all popular. Vouchers for the sessions are available.

Her pots are produced on the potter's wheel using red earthenware clay and decorated with coloured slips under a transparent or matt glaze. Different methods of applying the slips are used, from simple brush strokes to paper resist and slip trailing, sponge printing and 'splatting'. The functional wares have a transparent glaze, which means the pots are oven proof and dish washer safe. Recent pots are decorated with slip and then burnished, parts of the pots are glazed so they can be used as well as decorative.

Angela welcomes commissions for commemorative pieces to unusual one offs.

There is a small showroom at Milland Pottery where pots are on permanent display.

Each November Angela co-hosts a Contemporary Craft Exhibition and Sale at Milland Village Hall.

Hilary Charlesworth

My passion is rug weaving on an eight shaft floor loom in my West Sussex studio. I am very excited by colour and colour blending and this is reflected in my work. Inspiration comes from many sources, including overheard fragments of conversation which I "hear" as pattern and colour. My rugs can be seen on my website.

Sue Colyer

Sue is a self-taught artist whose is passionate about her chosen medium, watercolour. Sue combines her love of nature with the unique qualities of watercolour, transparency and fluidity, in her work. When she started painting on retiring from full time work she concentrated solely on floral studies, and is still an exhibiting member of the Society of Floral painters. However, over the years landscapes and coastal subjects have joined her choice of subject which are mainly driven by the wonder of nature. She aims to capture the essence and atmosphere of her subject rather than the image itself and is influenced by both past and present day contemporary artists.

Sue is also a member of various local art societies and her work has been exhibited with The Society of Women Artists (SWA) at the Mall Gallery in 2011 and 2012.

June Duckworth

June trained at the Southern College of Art Bournemouth with an ADT degree in Ceramics. She spent much of her working life as a teacher before retiring to live in the Hampshire countryside.

June specialises in making sculptures of the animals and birds living around her. She sees them from an individual viewpoint which captures their character.

Her work is based on form, movement and pattern. It is made using the hand coiled technique, and fired to stoneware temperature with a matt glaze finish.

Toni Goffe

The world about us as seen through Toni's eyes is the world of humour. With whimsical cats, fanciful dogs, quizzical sheep, curious cows, luscious landscapes of the rural countryside, hidden harbours and mysterious ports as seen through his rainbow coloured glasses.

Toni studied painting and illustration at Southampton College of Art after which he moved to London where he freelanced as an illustrator of children's books. He still works in this field currently working on a project for Club Morgan.

Over the years he has run several galleries in England and from 1982-85 Toni spent 3 years in Boston USA learning how to work in oils and running a gallery. Toni is also passionate about jazz and has played double bass professionally in many London jazz bands.

In 2007 Toni was invited to become chairman of the newly formed Hampshire Artists Co-Operative based at The Selborne Gallery. By coincidence the same gallery that he and Jill, his wife, ran in the 1970s.

Toni lives in Alton where he continues to exhibit and work on his painting and illustration.

Sue Hoar

Sue loves colour. She enjoys painting abstracts as well as more figurative and expressionist paintings but it is always colour that is of most importance to her. She believes that you do not choose colour but that colours choose you..

In fact, for Sue, the whole process of painting is more of a journey of exploration and intuition than a planned exercise.

Sue studied art at Richmond Adult College and has exhibited in London at The Adam Street Club and at Virgin Money in aid of The Samaritans and in The Harbour Gallery in Jersey and participated in Richmond ArtHouse and Surrey Artists Open Studios. She is delighted to be a new member of Hampshire Artists' Cooperative.

In an attempt at diversifying and developing her art, Sue is currently studying abstract landscape painting with Christopher Baker.

Maggie Marten

Maggie joined The Hampshire Artist Cooperative at its inception. She loves drawing and painting, first from observation and then using the drawings to create a larger, more imaginative, expressive and sometimes semi-abstract version. It has been an exciting journey using mixed media but mainly working with watercolours, charcoal, graphite and oils. She paints landscapes, people, flowers, abstracts and farm animals.

Maggie has exhibited at The Selborne Gallery in Selborne, Hilliers Garden Centre, nr Romsey, Oxmarket Centre of Arts in Chichester, The Grapevine Gallery & the Ringstead Gallery in Norfolk and the Hereford Gallery. She has also opened her studio with Hampshire Open Studios.

John Phillipson

I graduated from Portsmouth College of Art & Design in the sixties and spent thirty years teaching Art & Design in Portsmouth Schools. I was Head of the Art & Design Department at Portsmouth College for 13 years. I have always been a practising sculptor and since retirement have been fulltime. I have sat on the Board of the Hampshire Sculpture Trust for the last twenty years.

I am able to work in a range of materials but my greatest enjoyment is working with stoneware clay; I like it for its immediacy, flexibility and versatility: it is able to be shaped and refined through all its stages of drying before final firing and glazing and further more I am able to produce forms in a variety of sizes .

Pieces develop organically from observation of form, attitude and movement in the natural world often taking the shape of stylised birds.

I also enjoy the challenge of commissioned work and meeting the needs of the client.

Lucille Scott

Lucille Scott is an artist blacksmith creating hand forged metal items inspired by nature and her love for dance and music. She loves the fluidity of metal when hot and how this can be frozen in time. For Lucille the appeal of working with iron lies in the traditional role of blacksmiths, the permanence of their work and passing on this tradition to all around her. As a child, Lucille spent many a happy hour watching a blacksmith at work, in her 20s he offered an apprenticeship but having just completed a BEd in Design and Technology at Goldsmiths College she decided to follow the path of teaching. After 16 years in education her love of blacksmithing was rekindled prompting her to do some training at Hereford College of Technology and set up her own workshop, "Little duck Forge" in Eastney, Portsmouth.

Lucille spends a good proportion of her time teaching in the forge, some of it just fun days out for whoever wants to have a go, some designed to foster a love of making in the next generation. She can be seen demonstrating using her kitchen sink hearth powered with a plastic bag at local museums, fairs and garden shows.

Her work is constantly developing, 2015 saw the launch of Earth, Water and Fire, a collection of work using materials born of the earth, inspired by the sea and made in collaboration with other artists using crafts that are fused together by the searing strength of heat.

Mark Smith

I have always loved working in metal. It amazes me that something so hard and unforgiving in its normal state, can, with the application of heat, become plastic and malleable so enabling it to be formed into a myriad of different shapes. It seems incongruous that you can take hard metal and make a dragonfly's wing or a bird's feather, but you can!

I find copper great to work with, it has a warm tone, and it's not harsh like steel, or sleek like silver, but almost soft. It lends itself to natural forms and movement. I find a piece of slate or stone and from its shape an idea will grow. It could be an idea of movement, or a frozen moment in time. Then from a flat sheet of copper or differing gauges of wire I tease out that idea. There is never a plan or drawings, it grows as it will until at last it reaches the point where idea and form meet.

Mike Topham

My current works are based on the simple and humorous things in everyday life, and are often inspired by a phrase, saying, childhood memory or 'what if?' situation.

Subject matter is created from various gauges of copper wire and mixed media, and give a three-dimensional effect when mounted.

David Wade

David is both an artist and an architect. He travels around the South of England painting outdoors in watercolour quickly and spontaneously, finishing the paintings in his studio afterwards. Landscape in all its forms is his subject and passion. The principle themes of his work are the effects of light and colour on the image.

Working quickly in watercolour gives his paintings maximum freshness and impact and he uses 'wet in wet' techniques painting two or three pieces at a time. He tries to follow the golden rule of 'do it once and do it right' so he rarely overpaints.

David's acrylic paintings are more analytical studio works derived from remembered forms, and colours. This allows him to 'construct' the nature of the South Downs.