Amanda Airey draws on mark-making, patterns in the natural world, post-war South Korean Dansaekhwa, music, nostalgia, mythology, and the Welsh concept of Hiraeth - a deep longing for a place or time to which one cannot return, a kind of romantic melancholy. Airey seeks a visual language for experiences of place and time, loss, memory, cycles and impermanence, while finding simplicity within complex ideas and emotions. The recurring motifs of the line and circle are central to this language. The line originates in childhood drawing and mark-making, while the circle suggests wholeness, cycles and time, but also connects to personal memories of loss and her grandfather placing coins on her mother’s eyes “to pay the ferryman.” Her process moves between intention and instinct. Ideas, memories or statistics may provide a starting point, but the act of painting often takes over, allowing marks to respond to one another and the original idea to become abstracted. The work ultimately holds both grief and the simple joy of being alive. Ian Farmer produces simple, rhythmic, minimal graphic prints that draw on his background in graphic and interior design and being a product of Harlow New Town, a pioneering, mid-20c English modernist town. Structure, pattern and the relationship between positive and negative space are themes that recur throughout his work. He aims to produce playful, abstract artworks that explore ‘certainty’ in mark making. For him, what is ‘left out’ is as important as what is ‘put in’. Being clear and brave, by not ‘over egging’, is a constant struggle, but one that he enjoys. He is the owner of Upright Gallery.

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