A Warm Welcome to New Members

In the past few weeks Corrine and Janine, director and gallery manager respectively, have invited three new artists to be part of the Blott Art-Studio collective.  The artists, all very different,  will each bring something new to the collective.  Mark, Mike and Jill are looking forward to making their individual contributions to Blott in the near future.



Mark Peatfield started painting and drawing when he was very young and continued up until his teens when, for no particular reason, he stopped. Many years later and following a series of traumatic life events he started painting again. 
Mark says his PhD in Cognitive Psychology and research background into computational models of human cognition shape his world view. His paintings therefore depict a mechanistic and strange world, where, for example, human experience is encased in a metal sphere.  

A Preston Winter Sunrise by Mark Peatfield

He is fascinated by models of human awareness and paints to express the descent into madness that results from gradual or traumatic damage to the fragile human ego. He visits literature, music and personal experience for inspiration. and also paints to express the isolation and loneliness which is the human condition - particularly in industrial settings.  




                                     

Mike Grattan, an avid drawer and painter from childhood, would get his pocket money every Saturday. By the evening, a sketchbook, bought with the money, would be full, and Mike would trail around local wallpaper shops asking for their old samples books, in order to draw on the backs. 

He attended Lancaster College of Art and made a career as a graphic designer/illustrator. His earliest illustrative influences were the artists of Marvel Comics like Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and Jim Steranko.

Elizabeth Taylor by Mike Grattan

With a life-long love of Pop Art, Mike has worked on various series related to media celebrities.  His finely executed images of iconic people in the media, from film star musicians and celebrities are a mass of detail, beautifully and carefully delineated in acrylic paint on canvas.  


In 2013 Mike had a one man exhibition in Liverpool.

Jill Reidy, another artist who spent her childhood drawing and painting, originally trained as a graphic designer at Leicester College of Art and Design in the late 60s/early 70s. After fifteen years running a cake decoration business and various other creative enterprises, she then spent a further fifteen years in the teaching profession, taking early retirement in order to pursue her passion, photography. 

Moon over Havana by Jill Reidy

Following a short visit to Havana, Cuba in 2012, returning with 1500 photos to process, Jill realised that her passion had become an obsession. 

She has exhibited at Blott Art-Studios and Cafe Dolce, and currently has a one woman  exhibition, 'Hanging Out in Havana', at La Piazza, Bispham, with another booked at the Solaris for November.  Jill also has a small collaborative exhibition, 'Blackpool' at Revoe Library.