Your invitation to the online launch of Newbury Art Collective showcase

Gallery and shop gives visitors chance to buy direct from artists

A group of artists have joined together to launch their annual showcase online and give visitors the opportunity to buy their work.

Newbury Art Collective was formed in 2016 by four like-minded artists to organise exhibitions and events to promote the work of the group and other invited artists. Each year they hold an annual exhibition and as this isn't possible under current restrictions, they will be launching an online gallery and shop this weekend (Saturday, May 16).

Collective artist Isabel Carmona said: “As a response to the cancellation or postponement of all public art events including the annual Open Studios West Berkshire and North Hampshire, NAC felt that in order to showcase and offer their artwork to their public they needed to go online.”

The gallery website and the art shop are run independently by the artists so that the customer knows that they are purchasing directly from the artist when buying any artwork.

To visit the gallery go to www.newburyartcollective.com from there there is a link to their shop. To attend their online launch event on Saturday, visit their Facebook page for updates on the day and take part on their OffCuts sale, an affordable art sale with a twist – the price is fixed and you’ll get one of the artworks on sale but you don’t know which one till your number is linked to the artwork at the launch event.

The members showcasing their work are:

• Isabel Carmona, watercolour painter, urban sketcher and printmaker who is missing her outdoors escapades that help her to collect inspiration. An avid urban sketcher, Isabel collects her images on location in watercolours and drawing and transforms them through print and mix media into artworks filled with memories of her experiences.
• Ben Honisett, digital artist, photographer and mix media artist. With a graphic design background, Ben experiments freely into a variety of mediums that include graphic landscapes, abstract street photography and mixed media compositions. His close up photographs record colour and texture of walls that get scaled up to create new abstract compositions.
• Emma Green, printmaker and mixmedia artist, is inspired by the British countryside. The natural world provides Emma with great inspiration with landscape, plants and especially birds forming the core of her imagery. Her bird prints are so detailed and full of character that the viewer strikes a conversation with the birds themselves.

Nine guest artists are joining NAC online:

• John Brazendale with his latest landscape ceramic walls and unique vases
• Bruce Bamber who paints in an uninhibited way and takes inspiration from surrounding landscapes
• Angela Willis who shows her poetry in abstracted landscapes acrylic paintings
• Katherine Kingdon whose pots and ceramic boxes tell stories that make people smile
• Jonathan Mansfield responding on location to the landscape with coloured abstract canvases
• Laura Kirkpatrick whose clean abstract oils are carefully composed and have added delicate figurative details collaged onto them
• Lenny Cornforth, whose layered abstracts unveil what may be behind
• Wendy Lloyd with her prints playing with spherical forms or showing local landscapes
• Lorna Goldsmith, who shows her tapestries on a variety of yarns and colours