In partnership with Gavagan Art, Art in the Atrium at Low Wood Bay Resort & Spa provides an accessible, free and informal way of being able to see a display of fine art in the resorts' spacious Atrium.
Gavagan Art, in Lancaster, works with artists from throughout the British Isles with an emphasis on artists from the North of England with many artists based in either Yorkshire, Lancashire or Cumbria.
Tony Roberts trained in Fine Art Painting at Hornsey College of Arts London (1954-1959), and at the Royal Academy Schools (1959-1962), where the teaching emphasised drawing and traditional materials and techniques.
He works in oils, watercolours, pastels, gouache and acrylic paints, exploring three main themes: landscapes, still-life paintings with flowers, and paintings based on Buddhist /Hindu imagery and shrines.
Tony’s approach to painting is interpretive. Explorations of colour and of the drawing process are an integral part of his methods. Mark-making and the materiality of his mediums are as much the subject of his work as the observed image.
Tony Roberts grew up in Enfield, North London and first visited the Yorkshire Dales in 1958, as an art student. He met the painter Norman Adams who became his mentor, teaching colleague and life-long friend.
Tony moved from London to Northwest England in1962 to take up teaching positions at Bolton College of Art and then at Manchester Metropolitan University (then Manchester Regional College of Art and later Polytechnic) where he taught painting for twenty-seven years.
Since 1978 he has lived in The Yorkshire Dales, where he has a studio in a converted Victorian Sunday School.
The landscapes of The Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District are enduring themes in his work.
Tony’s paintings are in private and public museum collections and have been shown nationally and internationally including The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London, and galleries in New York, Switzerland and Germany.
In 1985, having studied ceramic design at Chelsea College of Art, William Plumptre travelled to Japan, there he continued his training in the workshops of three different potters, including one year with the Japanese master, Tatsuzo Shimaoka, a National Treasure. The training regime was rigorous and repetitive but he returned to England with greater knowledge and understanding of the Japanese way of producing and firing pottery in a traditional climbing kiln.
In 1987 William Plumptre set up his first pottery in Hartsop near Patterdale, where he built his own oil-fired kiln in the outbuildings of a traditional stone built Lakeland house. He moved into a seventeenth century farmhouse in nearby Witherslack in 1994 and established a new studio where he creates his pottery today.
He throws with robust stoneware clay and makes a variety of press moulded bottles and dishes, with the use of rope and material each piece is then inlaid with different coloured slips. His glazes are made largely of local materials including wood ash and granite, all of his work is reduction fired in the sixty-five cubic foot gas-fired kiln, which he designed himself.
William’s work is included in a number of public collections including: Blackwell Arts and Crafts House, Windermere, Cumbria.
Other artists whose work curated by Gavagan Art, that have had exhibitions as part of the Art in the Atrium gallery.
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