Exhibitions, Kings Hill, Kent.

May to August 2026

From 1986 to 1996 I owned a restaurant in Brighton and sold it when I became hooked on ceramics at an evening class. So that I could study the subject further. I spent five years at college, studying photography and plastics as well as ceramics. When I graduated in 2001, I took out a lease on workshop premises in Hove, and sublet spaces to other artists/craftspeople. Since then I have exhibited and sold my work at art fairs and galleries throughout the British Isles. In 2004 I won an award for Best Newcomer at BCTF, and have written features for their magazine “The Craftsman’. I took a post grad in teaching and learning in HE, and have worked part-time as a tutor at Northbrook College, Brighton University and HMP Ford.

My inspiration comes from flowers and plants that we see all around us, in gardens, fields even cracks in the pavement. I particularly love the secret worlds inside these flowers, in the patterns and textures hidden away that give a continuing sense of promise and renewal.

Until 2005 my work had been mainly in the domestic & functional arena, but then I decided to work on larger, often one off, sculptural pieces. So far, I have concentrated on the forms of seed pods and fruiting bodies which ties in with my earlier work, but which looks completely different.

I like to play with scale and will often imagine the size that a plant must appear to an insect…what is it about the flower that attracts or repels?  Often I will scale my sculpture up so that we can have an ‘insects eye view’ of it.

I work in stoneware, throwing the basic shape of the sculpture, then I alter and model onto it. This gives me a certain speed and control which is the way I prefer to work. My pieces are high fired so that they can go into an interior or exterior environment.

My glazes are chosen to compliment the form and are often slightly chrystalline or irradescent, this makes the pieces glow.

 

a mixed media artist using primarily collage, oil pastel and acrylics. She explores organic colours and shapes found within the natural world, specifically the paradox between plant and human physiology; the often dynamic and beautiful, unseen processes of growth, death and reproduction.

Jane trained at the Medway College of Art in Kent, initially working alongside designers and architects, producing large scale artworks in clubs, restaurants and offices. She taught drawing at the British Museum, London, before becoming Head of Art at a local preparatory school.

She has exhibited in numerous exhibitions across the UK, Ireland and Germany, and her work is also held in private collections, New York, Miami, India and Cayman Islands.

Jane currently works from a studio in Dorking.

Jerry Simcock

Jerry lives in Athelstaneford, East Lothian,Scotland. He enjoys working in oils, gouache and water colour. He is fascinated by colour, light and space and the juxtaposition of colours and forms. His work is often a spontaneous action and response to light and the local landscape, experimenting with colour and attuning to its vibrancies.  In his past working life he worked with children who had been excluded  from school and placed in referral units, later with children in a child psychiatric hospital. He used art as a means to establish communication and as a way of working alongside children who were often threatened by face to face interactions. Communicating through making art offered a feeling of trust and security to the children, as communication was established children were more able to work out feelings through art or through talking while making. He now enjoys painting with childlike spontaneity, tactility and simplicity. He starts most days in painting rapidly in a ten minute burst as a warm up for other work and these quick ‘splashabouts’ often inform his more considered oil paintings. He enjoys working with ‘what comes up’ as part of daily zen practice. Walking in landscape and paying attention to all that is occurring alongside the rhythms of breathing and footsteps influences what later comes up on the canvas or paper.