Summer Show - A Joint Exhibition
Tuesday 25th to Sunday 30th June 2024
Open Tuesday - Friday 10am - 3pm, Saturday 10am - 4pm, Sunday 10 - 3pm
The Setting gallery, Three Storeys, Old Bristol Rd, Nailsworth, GL6 0JE
A Summer Show of current work by Nick Young, Daisy Murdoch, Rebecca Simmons, Melanie de Gray Birch, Clair Wayman, Andy Bradley and Fiona Doran.
Clair Wayman
Growing up in the market town of Ludlow, Shropshire in the 1970’s, Clair Wayman always had a love of art, thanks to her parents encouraging her to draw and paint from a young age. She would often be found with sketch book in hand, roaming the countryside with her beloved Springer Spaniel, Bella.
Clair moved with her family to Cheltenham and learnt how to screen print at sixth form college. She gained a BA Honours Degree in Visual Art and Art History at Aberystwyth University, specialising in screen printing and painting. Further education included a Post Graduate Diploma in Textile Design at Leeds University. After her studies she moved to Hackney, East London and was drawn to the world of interiors. She embarked on a career as an interior stylist for leading homes magazines, designing room sets, styling decorating shoots and writing features.
Clair then moved to Melbourne, Australia in 2003 where she worked as the Style Editor for Real Living magazine and co-founded Curio & Curio, a colourful screen-printed homewares brand. She set up a boutique homewares store in a seaside town near Melbourne selling her vibrant cushions and art prints, as well as taking on interior design commissions.
When she returned to Gloucestershire in 2014 she continued to design textiles for her brand, selling to customers worldwide, before accepting a 5 year post as Houses Editor for The English Homes magazine. Having left this role just over a year ago, she’s come full circle and is now rediscovering her passion for printing-making all over again.
In 2023 she became a member at the Gloucestershire Print Co-operative in Stroud and loves having the freedom to just play. In her new hand screen-printed work, she’s enjoying combining vivid colour with bold shapes and pared back still life compositions, taking inspiration from treasured vases and vessels that she’s collected over the years.
@clairoliviawayman clair@clairwayman.com
Daisy Murdoch
Daisy Murdoch is a local, Stroud based fine artist working from her studio above Pegasus Art in Brimscombe. Predominantly focussing on commissioned portraits, she also paints imagined characters, wry reflections on life, beautiful objects and creatures that resonate with her.
Daisy has always been creatively minded but was originally steered in a more academic direction by her family and studied philosophy at Bristol university. She then found herself navigating the fast-paced world of advertising in New York and London, before training as a chef. She built up various enterprises over the years and is still occasionally persuaded to cater for a wedding or party, but these days just loves to cook up a storm for family and friends.
Having been born in North London, and then raised on a farm, Daisy describes herself as ‘half urbanite and half bumpkin.’ She’s now settled in the beautiful Stroud Valleys with her husband, three kids and a menagerie of animals. With a healthy dose of humour, she says ‘I’ve survived DIY hell, whilst riding the highs and lows of veg patches, and chickens (a disastrous combination!)’
Since her 30’s, Daisy made the somewhat arduous full circle to seriously re-engage with painting and her own creative narrative. Working mainly in oils, Daisy’s paintings are sensitively observed in exquisite, delicate tones. A life well lived has given Daisy an insightful, observant way of working and her portraits capture the true essence of her subjects.
@daisy.murdoch www.daisymurdoch.co.uk
Fiona Doran
A local Stroud designer and “blow-in,” Fiona Doran has lived in this wondrous area for 25 years. Now specialising in textile art and design, she creates beautifully simple bags that are stylish, functional and timeless.
In a previous life Fiona was a graphic designer at a leading London agency for 10 years before re-discovering her love for textiles whilst raising a young family. Training as a Further Education art and life skills tutor also allowed her to further explore different areas of functional art and design.
Utter simplicity is always key to her bag designs whilst using the finest quality materials. A strongly held green ethos and anti-waste sensibility means Fiona only utilises found, surplus materials.
A highly skilled seamstress (thanks Mum!) she channels her artistic sensibility into designs that are practical, beautiful and original. Utilising the finest quality surplus leather hides from Connolly, and other prestigious manufacturers, her bags focus on function, style and simplicity over any superfluous detailing. Any flash or pop of colour comes from the highest quality marine rope. Holes are carefully punched and the whole design is expertly finished. Even the angler’s knots are chosen for their simple beauty and strength. All are far more than the sum of their parts.
With a timeless workwear vibe, all Fiona’s bags have an understated elegance of design and practicality. Choose from the classic “Fiona bag” which re-interprets the old-skool duffel bag with a contemporary twist, or the “Kitty bag” with its stripped-down elegance and practicality.
@thefionabag fiona.doran@yahoo.co.uk
Melanie de Gray Birch
Melanie's journey started at Cheltenham College of Art studying fashion and textiles, after graduating with a BA Hons Degree in Fashion Design from Lancashire University, she moved to London working in the fashion industry for over 20 years as Head of Buying and Design. Travelling extensively as part of her career she found her passion was very much centred around print and colour, spending several weeks every year in India, where her love of Paisley, vivid colour & block printed fabric began.
Melanie now creates and hand makes bespoke gathered and pleated lampshades, using Indian block printed fabric, along with sourcing a myriad of one-of-a-kind vintage and retro textiles, crafting her unique handmade lampshades, she partners the shades with bases created from repurposed, upcycled antique glass carboys and retro ceramic vases, so each piece is truly unique.
Melanie de Gray Birch set up Buckingham & Birch in 2023, she works from a studio space in the SVA - Stroud Valleys Art Space and lives in the Slad Valley.
@buckinghamandbirch
Nick Young
As a child growing up in Cheltenham, Nick’s life revolved around sport, but he started becoming interested in street art, music and fashion in his late teens. Moving to London in the early 1990’s, he immersed myself in the world of acid jazz, hip hop and street culture. He remembers a seminal moment when he saw the work of American street artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat at an exhibition at the Serpentine gallery in London and realised how powerful art can be in conveying emotion. After leaving University, he worked as an account executive in London and joked that he felt like a creative person trapped in a salesman’s body.
It wasn’t until 2003 when he moved to Melbourne, Australia that he started to explore various mediums and his creative journey really began. He fell in love with print making and painting and hasn’t looked back. In 2009 he co-founded Curio & Curio, a design studio that also became an iconic destination homewares store in country Victoria and inner-city Melbourne, selling his eye-catching hand screen printed cushions, artwork and homewares.
Moving back to Gloucestershire in 2014, Nick continued his creative practise, painting and printmaking prolifically and has sold his artwork all over the world. He joined the Gloucestershire Print Co-operative in Stroud in 2023 and spends as much time there as he can. His work often features funny looking kids in superhero costumes with an element of social commentary.
Nick currently produces work under the name ‘Milk Bar Kid’ which is a subtle nod to his days printing in Australia. (Milk Bars are corner shops found in every suburb).
@milkbarkidart @mr_nicholas_young youngnicholas@mac.com www.milkbarkid.com
Rebecca Simmons
Rebecca Simmons is a local, Stroud based ceramist and painter who creates sculptural and domestic pieces using a mixture of slabs, coils and moulding clay to allow strange folkloric characters to emerge. Her work explores the affinities between clay and paint.
Rebecca went to art college in Newcastle before completing an MA in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art and Design some years later.
Last year Rebecca received the DYCP funding, a yearlong Arts Council grant, to develop her creative practice, which has allowed her to extend her work and her methodology. During this time, she drew inspiration from folk art traditions. She works in an organic way, letting the clay shape suggest how it might be decorated, rather than plan it from the start.
Rebecca has been a resident artist at Victoria Works studios in Chalford, near Stroud for the last ten years. She runs courses in art and pottery for adults and children at her studio, using techniques of play and processes to instigate imaginative projects.
@rebsimmons12 www.rebsimmons.com
Andy Bradley
Andy Bradley graduated from Chelsea School of Art in 1982 with an MA in Fine Art Painting and since then he has had a very successful, long career as a decorative artist. Specialising in decorative paint finishes which include murals, stencilling, wood graining and marbling, he’s spent many years developing his painting skills to transform the interiors of beautiful houses across the UK and Europe.
Although this kind of work has been creative and fulfilling, Andy has always been passionate about producing his own paintings. Over the last 5 years he’s returned to this path of self-discovery and loves to spend time in his light-filled home studio in Stroud, where he paints as often as he can.
These new canvas artworks convey an energetic, colourful and playful response to the subject matter, with starting points ranging from still life, gardens and local landscapes, as well as the development of the painting itself. Andy is interested in the duality between the reference and its abstracted form in the painting, striving for its essence. He uses mainly acrylic paint and often moves the painting between horizontal and vertical positions when painting. Andy has recently exhibited at Sixteen Gallery in Cheltenham and during the Stroud SITE Festival.
@andy_bradley_paintings www.andybradley.co.uk