claire hankey
Claire Hankey is a contemporary British artist exploring water, place and memory through atmospheric, mixed media processes.
Art that creates a sense of calm and connection, bringing depth and presence to interior spaces.
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Claire Hankey captures the beauty of memory and nature in atmospheric, abstract paintings.
From her studio in Leigh on Sea in Essex, she create paintings and mixed media pieces that offer moments of calm and reflection. Her goal is to invite viewers into a space of discovery through her work, where each piece tells it's own quiet story.
‘INSPIRATION IS EVERYWHERE.
Take a look through my artist's lens...
I grew up in the North West of England and many of my earliest memories are tied to the landscapes there. I now find inspiration in the wild hedgerows, moving tree canopies and marshes near my home on the Thames Estuary.
Glimmers of landscapes, shadows cast on a patio, and ambiguous plant forms are all recurring motifs within my work. These places and vignettes hold hidden beauty and stories that I capture in my art, encouraging you to pause and uncover what lies beneath the surface.
Unearthing layers of meaning.
My creative process is deeply intuitive and experimental. I work with layers of paint, collage, and wax, blending these materials with vintage papers and fragments from my mother’s old dress patterns. Through this process of building up layers and uncovering hidden details, my goal is to create depth, texture and atmosphere. Each piece invites viewers to engage not just with what’s on the surface, but to discover what lies beneath.
Weathered surfaces and the passage of time.
The layers in my work are often sanded back or scratched through, creating tactile surfaces that remind me of weathered forms shaped by time. This method evokes the feeling of something that has been touched by the elements, a sense of the past woven into the present. It’s an exploration of how time and nature leave their marks on the world and on my art.
Inspired by nature's forms.
My connection to nature plays a central role in my process. Plants collected from my garden and on estuary walks serve as both mark-making tools and inspiration for ongoing work. I press botanical prints and use handmade collage papers, embedding them into the layers of my paintings to add a sense of mystery and provenance.
Connecting to personal memories.
At its core, my art is about connection. I hope that when viewers look at my paintings, they experience a visual journey that leads them to reflect on their own memories of nature. Each piece offers a moment to pause, engage with the textures, and perhaps connect with a deeper, personal story within themselves.’
Holding the Evening, 2025, 60 x 60cm FRAMED
Holding the Evening, 2025, 60 x 60cm FRAMED
Untamed Skies, 75cm x 75cm FRAMED
Untamed Skies, 75cm x 75cm FRAMED
Rory a. jones
Through layered, gestural surfaces, self-taught artist Rory A. Jones explores themes of tension, distance, and connection. His process is intuitive yet deliberate, authentic yet unpretentious.
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Based in London, Rory’s practise is concerned with what a painting feels like; how it can be understood instinctively, in the same way we respond to language, music, or memory. Working across acrylic, pastel, music and video, Rory centres his practice on abstraction as a form of language, exploring how emotion and experience can be communicated without fixed narrative or recognisable imagery. Having studied languages at university, he came to painting after a decade working outside the arts, seeking a more direct and meaningful way of engaging with the world. His work has since developed from figurative oil painting into a more immediate, confessional approach shaped by lived experience.
His often large-scale paintings operate as open spaces, inviting viewers to take a moment and find their own meaning within them; not forcing an immediate interpretation.
Chasm, 165 x 175cm, Framed, 2026
Chasm, 165 x 175cm, Framed, 2026
Chasm, 165 x 175cm, Framed, 2026
Chasm, 165 x 175cm, Framed, 2026
vivien thomason
Vivien creates complex, emotionally resonant abstract works by dripping and swirling liquid acrylics. Her process is both intuitive and deliberate: compositions often begin in chance and fluidity, before being carefully manipulated to reveal suggestions of form. Fluid, gestural figures emerge from these surfaces often drawing on myth and symbolism: Furies, goddesses, demons, and imagined female warriors.
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Her paintings balance fierceness with playfulness, lyricism with confrontation. They engage with themes of misogyny, environmental crisis, and entrenched systems of power, offering a visual language that is both personal and political.
Vibrant colour plays a central role, evoking emotion through subtly gothic palettes grounded in sepias and rich chocolate tones, with highlights of copper and gold that echo the luminosity of medieval icon painting.
Recurring motifs include ancient Egyptian deities such as Sekhmet—goddess of both war and healing, depicted as split or doubled to emphasise the contradictions within her nature. Vivien also explores Empusae, demons drawn from ancient Greek mythology, reimagined through contemporary feminist literature, particularly The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk.
Her “map” paintings are created by pouring paint onto horizontal surfaces, evoking lands, worlds or fragmented faces. Another recurring series, the “Necklace” paintings, reflects the symbolic meanings of semi-precious stones—for example, opal as a symbol of hope—drawing on Vivien’s previous career in fashion jewellery while connecting to broader, universal narratives.
Her work is informed by artists such as Frank Bowling, Marlene Dumas, Francis Newton Souza, and Odilon Redon.
Originally from Carlisle, Vivien is now based in North London, where she works as a full-time artist. She has exhibited in a range of solo and group shows across Highgate, Shoreditch, and Dorset.
Empusia 120 x 100cm Copper & Charcoal 2026
Five Furies Punk 100 x 80cm Acrylic on Canvas Black wood Tray Frame 2025
jessica elliott
Jess Elliott is an abstract artist based in Oxfordshire, England. Working with a variety of materials such as oil and cold wax, plaster, acrylic and sand, she creates richly coloured and textured paintings that explore the depths of the subconscious and the complexities of the human mind. Largely self-taught, Elliott began her full-time artistic practice in 2023, developing a distinctive visual language rooted in intuition, emotion, and material exploration.
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Her paintings are built through a process of layering, scraping back, and revealing, a physical dialogue that mirrors the layered nature of memory and thought. Through this approach, Elliott seeks to uncover “what lies beneath,” using the materiality of paint itself as a metaphor for the shifting states of consciousness. Working from her home studio, she continues to push the boundaries between control and spontaneity, embracing both the chaos and calm that emerge in the act of creation.
My work is an exploration of the internal landscape, a visual reflection of memory, emotion, and the subconscious mind. I approach each painting without a fixed outcome, allowing intuition to lead the process. This sense of freedom is essential; it enables me to access the subconscious and to respond instinctively to what unfolds on the surface.
The materials I use (primarily oil and cold wax, Acrylic & mixed media) lend themselves to building, layering, and erasing. I am drawn to their tactile nature and the way they allow history to be embedded within each work. By scratching back and revealing earlier layers, I uncover traces of what has come before, much like unearthing hidden thoughts or emotions. This act of revealing and concealing reflects a recurring theme in my work: the tension between freedom and containment, order and chaos.
Colour and texture are central to my practice. They are not only expressive tools but also emotional languages through which I can navigate the complexities of being human. Each painting becomes a dialogue between conscious decision and instinctive gesture, between clarity and ambiguity. Ultimately, my work seeks to capture the essence of the ever-changing mind and the beauty found within its emotional complexity.
Structured Chaos, 60 x 80cm, Oil and Cold Wax. Framed, 2025
Structured Chaos, 60 x 80cm, Oil and Cold Wax. Framed, 2025
Letting Go, 40 x 60cm, Oil, Cold Wax and Mixed Media on Panel, Framed, 2025
Letting Go, 40 x 60cm, Oil, Cold Wax and Mixed Media on Panel, Framed, 2025
Easy Breezy, 42cm x 50cm, Oil & Cold Wax on Board, Framed, 2025
Easy Breezy, 42cm x 50cm, Oil & Cold Wax on Board, Framed, 2025
Easy Breezy, 42cm x 50cm, Oil & Cold Wax on Board, Framed, 2025
deborah rainsford
Deborah is a Chichester-based visual artist working primarily with paint and print. She views art as a catalyst for emotion and thought, aiming to spark both conversation and connection through her work.
Her practice is deeply rooted in personal experience and exploration. With a background in the travel industry, Deborah has embraced adventure and interaction with the wider world, which continues to inform her creative process.
“Exploring dreams, memory, and identity through vibrant layers of paint and print.”
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Each piece begins with a memory or dream, evolving through the interplay of materials, music, and intuition, often resulting in abstract compositions that invite reflection and connection. Her paintings resonate with layered colour, texture, and mark-making. This process-led approach reflects how memory accumulates, disintegrates, and fades, offering a cathartic exploration of one's inner world. “I feel the process of memory construction, and the loss of it, especially after trauma, impacts our sense of identity.”
Since graduating with a BA in Fine Art from the University of Chichester, Deborah has exhibited several times at the Oxmarket Gallery in Chichester, as well as at Aspex Gallery in Portsmouth and Gallery Grounds in Southampton.
"A variety of vibrant layered works in both paint and print that explore links between dreams, memory, trauma, and identity".
My practice investigates the ways we encounter the world and the individual perspectives through which we interpret those encounters. Grounded in a phenomenological approach, my work translates the emotional resonance of significant moments into both paint and print. I am particularly interested in the layered nature of memory—how it accumulates, shifts, erodes, and ultimately fades. Through colour, movement, and gesture, I reconstruct these remembered fragments, allowing elements of lived experience to surface through the process.
Music, sketches, and collected memorabilia act as catalysts, guiding imagery as it emerges through successive applications of paint. Working in layers enables me to examine which memories I choose to preserve and which I allow to dissolve, capturing the tension between what endures and what slips away. The resulting works often take on an abstract form, shaped by the interplay between intention and intuition.
My process is informed by a long-standing engagement with dance and movement, as well as extensive travel during my years in the tourism industry. These experiences continue to influence the rhythm, structure, and spatial sensibility of my compositions. Music plays a central role, offering a semi‑synesthetic framework that informs my use of colour and gesture. Audio recordings from specific places or moments in time often help unlock imagery or evoke alternative emotional responses.
Each painting evolves at its own pace, developing until it conveys a truthful expression of the memory it seeks to honour.
venetta nicole
Venetta Nicole is not just an artist but a storyteller, Venetta does not believe that there is one particular way of creating art.. Therefore, her work is a reflection of different responses to existing themes. creating narratives through vibrant colors and bold strokes on her canvas.
Her journey as an artist has been a tapestry of experiences, from commissioning bespoke pieces for diverse clients like the NHS to showcasing her talent at venues such as Sadlers Wells Theatre and Lauderdale House Gallery. She has also won the Susan Angoy category in the formally named Holy Bush Art Prize.
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Venetta Nicole creates portraiture and abstract scenes as a means to impart internal journeys of relevant subjects and relevant emotions. Each piece of art that she creates examines our unseen internal journeys experienced hoping to evoke comprehensive conversations with those that see them, no matter where on the globe they may find themselves.
Venetta's work captures ambiguity inviting the viewer to reconsider what is being prioritised in the visual space. Her art incorporates sense of movement achieved by using harmonious patterns, symbolic motifs and a bold, bright colour palette with intentional compositions. Venetta Nicole also commits to creating a narrative on canvas that invites viewers to embark on an internal journey of interpretation and introspection.
Working in mixed media which includes acrylic, oil pastel and charcoal on canvas creates depth and meaning. Venetta’s artistic vision embraces a fusion of Abstract art, Expressionism, and pop art, using these styles gives her the freedom of creating a unique visual Language.
"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes.
Art is knowing which ones to keep."
Felicity Acrylic and mixed media on canvas 120 x 100cm 2024
Felicity Acrylic and mixed media on canvas 100 x 120cm 2024
Felicity Acrylic and mixed media on canvas 120 x 100cm 2024