Northern Expressions

Artist Statement

Image: Where I Come From, Alice Kin (2022) Digitally Manipulated Performance

Artist Statement 

David Kenney paints, makes sculpture and writes.

David uses hard-edge painting, primarily with acrylics, to explore shadow and light in architectural forms. His paintings consist of many layers, adding and removing paint using a variety of methods and tools to achieve realistic textures.

His sculptural work explores similar themes to his paintings, with recurring motifs of basic architectural forms included throughout. David uses cast and mould to create precise, geometric forms in Jesmonite, using acid to remove surface layers to produce a concrete-like texture; often using coal, rusted iron and moss to create variation.

In all of his visual work, David pays particular attention to texture, shadow and light to give the pieces a feeling of past use and interaction; surfaces worn by the passing of time and human intervention occupy seemingly timeless landscapes; liminal spaces devoid of human presence.

A constant theme of worldbuilding runs through David’s work, with every piece having a place in a drafted story set in a fictional universe. Each painting or sculpture has a written counterpart; a chapter or scene that contributes to a grander narrative.

https://davidkenney.art/
https://www.instagram.com/davidkenneyart/

Why I applied to Northern Expressions 

I grew up in a working-class family in a mining village in East Durham.
I excelled in art at school and loved drawing as a child, but a career as an artist was not something which was seen as viable, and I was steered towards a career in architecture.
In my thirties I started to explore art as a means of self-expression; trying my hand at small cast sculptures and painting – as well as attempting creative writing. I realised over the space of a few years that Art was my ‘calling’, and teaching myself techniques and learning as much about the industry as possible while making as much art as possible, has been my main focus ever since.

The Northern Expressions programme will allow me to develop the knowledge, skills, time and space that will allow me to create larger, more ambitious work. Work which can be collected together to visually communicate the narrative I have planned in my writing.
I hope to gain the confidence to explore new techniques and take risks in my practice, without fear of being able to source more materials if a risk doesn’t pay off. I will be able to embark on creating exhibitions and experiences, rather than standalone work.

Image: Hobson and Morton © David Kenney

Artist Statement 

Think of a world where you live inside your head. What better way to express my thoughts and feelings, than through the magic of art?

Pen is the main Medium used in each piece but there is a love for learning other mediums. There is a whole world of arts for me to explore.

Drawing for me shows a strength that sometimes I felt I never had. Textures, lines, and details are so intense with just one implement, using a pen, I can create work of light and dark moods, shadows, and fine detailing to create effect and emotion! I refer to my head as a washing machine and most of my Art pieces have somewhere, a washer in them. I love animals, rural settings, and using my inner child to create imagination.

Why I applied to Northern Expressions.

I applied to Northern Expression to find my purpose. Art brings me joy and I would love to do more with Art and other Artists.

I wanted to get outside more and meet others, as I have struggled with socialising and getting out and about as much, in the past, which has affected my legs. I wanted to improve my skills, gain strength, grow my knowledge and to be able to be more confident around others and in my own ways.

I love a good challenge but I lost myself for a while. I saw an opportunity and went for it.

Instagram / @Miss_donnamindart
Tik Tok / @Miss_Donna_Mindart_offical

‘LOST’ 2023

Artist Statement

I want to tell a story or hint at a narrative without giving the plot away. I use traditional materials: oils, canvas, linen board in response to things that happen both to me and people around me. I have a library of personal imagery and motifs to play with, while I walk a line somewhere between abstraction and depiction, the real and the the imagined, control and freedom. Sometimes I pull it off, but sometimes I don’t. I try to learn from things that don’t work.

Instagram | @jennysutton99

Joining Northern Expressions

I joined Northern Expressions because I want to get better and I needed something different to be the catalyst for this: meeting other artists, having conversations, trying out different things, being challenged. My thinking, practice and view of myself as an artist is changing because of this wonderful opportunity.

Artist Statement

I’m a mixed media collage artist from North Yorkshire. I use both physical and digital collage, layers, textures, and poetry, to explore ideas of memory, energy, and identity.

I like the in-between, the liminal, and the uncanny. I am drawn to the idea of thin places, stone tapes, sliding doors – our place in time. I enjoy playing with words, and pairing them with images – static and moving, through (iphone) camera lens or surface mark making. I’m also fascinated by intimacy and connection in the digital age, how we foster relationships, see each other, project our quietest thoughts, and imagine ourselves within online spaces. In tandem, I like to explore in my work the things which anchor us, tuning in to and layering up cultural touchstones, alongside my own memories.

I picked up my paint brushes (and trusty pritt stick) in 2020 – like many who turned to art to make sense of the unusual times we found ourselves in. Built into my work, figuratively and literally as a collage artist, is an exploration of purpose. As a woman without children, my work allows me to consider notions of creativity, nurturing, and care outside of motherhood.

You can see some of my work over on my digital sketchbook (aka instagram!): @mimwahey

Why I applied for Northern Expressions 

I applied to Northern Expressions to push myself – a vote of confidence in my abilities and a challenge to take a step beyond my comfort zone. Not having had any formal arts training or a fine art degree behind me, it can feel like ‘being an artist’ is something other people do. I hope to prove to myself I can, I am, and create something extraordinary together with my fellow Northern Expressions artists. With immense gratitude to Scarborough Museums and Galleries and Crescent Arts for the time, space, and opportunity!

Artist Statement 

Estar is an expressionist and abstract printmaker and painter working from the unconscious to the conscious.

When beginning the artistic process Estar’s process is organic and spontaneous, subduing directional thought but choosing to work with a limited palette, layering paint, making marks and textures to create histories and memories within the piece.

Although an intuitive process when working on specific projects and briefs, research and engagement with communities will create influences and direct decision making as the pieces progress, although subconscious ideas, experiences and memories, feelings and imagery will all have a subtext within the work.

By letting the process just happen and without over thinking, the work opens up to reveal itself and is completed though conscious and thoughtful placement of form, accent colour and detail.

Artist Statement

I am a video artist whose work explores how memory, belief and folklore underpins and defines communities. I like to combine elements of drama, documentary, performance and music to create a kind of moving collage, using interviews and workshops to make a democratic, rather than didactic, finished piece. My inspirations include long walks through the suburbs, vague childhood memories and obscure old newspaper clippings. Previous work includes Where the Stone Dropped, a documentary about the communities on the former industrial peninsula of South Gare, and The Commons, a five-minute short on the unexpected connections between mushrooms, fairy myths and the internet. Political views: anarcho-Swiftie.

Instagram: www.instagram.com/grahamwfilms
Website: www.grahamwilliamsonfilms.com

Why I applied for Northern Expressions

I’m looking forward to creating new work that’s both personal and informed by meeting new people with new ideas in a new place. It’s already been an adventure, and has pushed me into doing things I wouldn’t have thought of otherwise.

Image: The Commons, Graham Williamson

Artist Statement 

Ever since a child I’ve been obsessed with art, however it took me until my mid twenties to finally decide to take it seriously. At the end of 2021 I bit the bullet and started to push my art in the direction of a career. It took half of 2022 to work out what I wanted to convey as an artist.

I landed on a concept that’s intrigued me for as long as I can remember, “Why are we conscious?” Through a mix of abstract sculpture, painting and meticulous research, I try and describe the most abstract of concepts. My delve into what makes us human at the most fundamental levels, has been incredibly enlightening for me. I aim to push this way of thinking on the world as way of bringing us all together.

We are all essentially the same, a chance array of billions of identical particles fused in an eternal cycle of energy. Out of their 13 billion years of existence, your particles happened to choose this infinitesimally small portion of time to form and entangle, enabling you to be here now. If that isn’t a cause for peace and celebration, nothing is. I try to allude to this point in every aspect of my work.