Do you understand abstract art? Open Studios West Berks & North Hants can guide you

Tom Cartmill, David H Jones and Claire Breitsprecher are abstract artists from this year’s Open Studios West Berks & North Hants (May 10-26). Ceramicists Moya Tosh and Teresa Munn, fellow participants in the scheme, find out more about their work and creative processes.

THE 2025 website for Open Studios West Berkshire & North Hampshire is now live, showing the work of 100 local artists who are taking part in the Open Studios programme in May.

Tom Cartmill, David H Jones and Claire Breitsprecher are abstract artists from the OS scheme and we caught up with them to find out about their work and their creative processes.

Abstract art has been popular since the early 20th century, when artists such as Mondrian, Kandinsky, Delaunay and Klee broke away from conventional artistic expression creating work which was not based on external reality. They simplified elements of reality by using colour, shape, geometric form and texture.

An important part of abstract art is often the ‘process’ of creating and this can determine the finished picture.

Tom Cartmill, from Burghfield, says: “My work is very much about process. It’s about exploring process and finding new ways of working with new materials.”

Significantly,Tom makes his own paint because it makes him feel more in touch with his materials. His work is mostly black, white and grey, but used to be more colourful and he explains the reason for this: “I have always taken the lead from the work and this is the way the work has led me.” This is a recurrent theme among abstract artists - how the process of creating the work dictates how it should/will look as a final piece.

Like many artists, Tom had a creative urge from a young age: “I always had a sense, from the age of 12, I had to make things. I started writing poetry and drew alongside it. By my late teens I was doing more drawing than writing.” He is still very interested in literature, music and poetry which he says have always been important and informed his world.

His style is the result of eclectic influences as diverse as Moorish architecture with highly patterned plasterwork and abstract geometric decoration; the fluid brushstrokes of the Spanish painter Diego Velasquez; the Dutch master Rembrandt with his dramatic depiction of light and shadow; the juxtapositioning of dark and light in early Renaissance religious paintings and the minimalist lines and grids of the 20th century American abstract artist Agnes Martin.

Tom himself likes working in grid patterns, often making interruptions to a grid form which both undermines the grid and accentuates it. He says: “I like working within a rigid structure and find release within it”. He likes “paring things down” and is interested in weathered and worn surfaces. His work can be divided into two strands: paper and board and he transfers the processes he uses between them.

He has had an uninterrupted life of making paintings. Scientists and geologists sometimes identify with his work but he leaves people to develop their own relationship with it: “A painting stands or falls by how it connects to you. I hope people will recognise some sort of integrity in the work.”

Tom is a member of the Scottish Society of Artists and last year won the Purcell Paper Prize at the Royal Scottish Academy. He has been selected to exhibit at the Royal Academy, London since 2016.

David H Jones is not precious about how people perceive his work. He says they can take whatever they want from his painting and if it rings bells for them, he is happy. He thinks viewers who like his work have a subconscious connection with it perhaps similar to his own which he describes as: “…a weird external/internal process. It’s subliminal in a way. It’s about accessing the subconscious and not imposing anything, feeling a compulsion to respond to the painting. You are a conduit.”

He says his inspiration comes from observing the changing colours of the seasons and the patterns and geometry of the natural world, how leaves fall on top of each other for example. He likes the space a canvas offers in terms of size, spaces and geometry. Pattern making is important because he says: “When I sit challenged to capture the essence of what I see in all its chaotic complexity I can only do it by simplifying it into patterns of colour and tone….”

This process of repetitive mark-making and over-painting can go on for months and he says he doesn’t really know what is going to happen until it is finished: “I start something off and work into it and then the process takes over…you put down a number of ideas and the painting is demanding of you. You don’t apply logic or a great deal of thought, you just have to respond to what the painting is asking.”

The longest it has taken him to do a painting is a couple of years and he says his interest has got to endure through the process: “It’s a form of imposed madness at times”.

David describes his work as a matter of exploration and himself as a painter putting paint on canvas. He has been painting since childhood, although his first ambition was to be an ornithologist based on observations of birds while exploring his native countryside, on the Wirral, as a child. Subsequent sources of influence came from Monet, the Pointillists, the Constructivists and travels in Europe, India, North Africa and the Greek Islands.

He studied Fine Art Painting at the West of England College of Art, Bristol, has taught adult art and life drawing classes in Berkshire while running a paintwork restoration business and lives in Lambourn with a studio overlooking the Downs. He has been with Open Studios since 1992.

In his current practice David is developing an entire sequence of colour combinations which he calls a ‘Colour Chord’. He hasn’t done a complete sequence before but enjoys exploring and resolving the problems he sets for himself.

Memory and emotion are two key ingredients of Claire Breitsprecher’s paintings. She says: “I’m not really trying to represent what’s being seen. I’m more interested in the memory of what’s there. It’s trying to remember the essence of what’s there, it could be the colour, the pattern of colour. I’m more into trying to remember what it felt like, to remind me of the place.”

Her work is a memoir of a moment or a specific place, she’s not really interested in the reality. Sometimes she does compositional sketches which serve as reminders of a thought process rather than an actual plan. She is looking at the proportions of colour and the shapes within the space and it is the space on the canvas which interests her, not what it will end up being. She likes to look around a painting and describes details as ‘quiet conversations’

Claire’s painting is largely based on her observation of the Hampshire countryside where she lives. She inhales the rhythms, colours, patterns, textures and shapes of nature on her regular walks. She is fascinated by shadows and has a particular thing for negative space: “It’s like a doorway into another space. It’s the parts rather than the whole.”

She records her observations in sketchbooks or on paper, which is later stuck to the studio wall, to remind her of the experience and the moment. Before starting a canvas she will work out her colour palette based on the story of the place, the time and the emotion.

Each painting is unplanned and Claire changes and layers the paints as the work develops, following the narrative as it unfolds and changes direction. She describes the painting process as a ‘train of thought’ but she doesn’t have a vision of what the finished piece will be: “I don’t want to control what the final paintings are, there’s something in the magic of discovering it as you go. I’ll keep going until I find it. I will get there but sometimes it could be ages…the finished piece is very important because I know how it should feel.”

The Secret Life of Trees is Claire’s current work in progress. She describes the story as ‘brewing’ and at the moment it is based on the idea of conversations between trees and the idea of the mother tree. She is experimenting with a colour palette based on browns and blues and muted tones and some of these chosen hues are attached to the wall to remind her of her thought processes.

Claire exhibited with Open Studios for the first time last year but has been painting since the age of 9 when one of her grandmothers introduced her to oil paint and showed her how to use a palette knife. She also has an artistic inheritance through one of her grandfathers who painted figurative pictures and always had elaborate stories to go with them. She completed her Foundation level at Swindon School of Art in 1996 but followed an alternative career path until 2023 when she returned to full-time painting. She is an admirer of the Catalan Spanish painter Joan Miro.

You can find out more about all three artists at https://www.open-studios.org.uk and visit them during Open Studios in May.