Creative responses to a post covid world – can we envisage something better than we had before? Is Covid-19 the problem or the way we are doing things.. We urgently need new visions of a world in harmony with each other, nature and the planet… Oblique Arts presents 6 artists vision of NOW. Jamie W G Ashman, Dan Catt, Penny Sobr, Karen Kellet, Sadie Few, Beverley Carpenter, Cathy Dunbar.
Jamie W G Ashman
Central Saint Martins Fashion Graduate turned Contemporary Artist Jamie Ashman creates fabulous original paintings with paint and mixed media from his imagination. His style refers to classicism and modern design and looks to Art history and a world of both today and the future to express the zeitgeist of the modern age.
Dan Catt
’Time To Reflect On A Better World’
“I envisioned this piece by showing the work in two halves, to bottom half being our current state of the world, so busy, so noisy with many industries eating away at the planet. I believe and imagine that after Covid people will have a greater understanding of how to treat their neighbours and the also how to look after the place they call home no matter where they are from and what colour their skin is.”
Penny Sobr
‘Rewild: The Art of Returning to Nature‘ As our busy, technology-driven lives become more sedentary we have become less connected to our natural surroundings. In these challenging times, it is by rediscovering our links to the world around us that we can rekindle the natural, human connection we have to the wild.
Sadie Phew & Genevieve Davis
Hazmat & Covid: Moving On! Mixed media on canvas 173 x 121.5cm
© 2020 Sadie Phew – http://www.sadiephew.co.uk
Using the images and words of our audiences while performing the Hazmat and Covid show in Bristol town centre and parks over July and August 2020, along with inspiration from our own experiences as performers.
‘Post-Covid Utopia’ 60 x 42cm, mixed media on canvas.
© 2020 Sadie Phew – http://www.sadiephew.co.uk
Beverley Carpenter
www.beverleycarpenter.co.uk/gaining_ground
My recent work around arts and ecology has focused on the search for utopia through communities who attempt to live in harmony with the earth and other species. As we move through this strange Covid-19 time of mass extinction I feel drawn to put down roots, root out seeds to plant and dig into the soil. The mexican proverb reads: “they tried to bury us.. they didn’t know we were seeds”..in times of oppression it becomes our time to grow, rise up and consciously create the world that we want to see..
Cathy Dunbar
www.facebook.com/cathy.dunbar1
60×80 canvas mixed media; bones and tidal waste, powdered natural yellow ochre, collage and pencil. During lockdown I had been thinking more about how I could move thinking forward both with a more equal, anti-racist community and also save our planet for everyone from returning distructionand over use. So I painted a billboard message to the people of Cambridge and organised and event about communication and working together with a group, ‘Little Blue Dot’, the event was called The end of the Pier show, neither was completely successful, both where fun and a bit scary.This image is a culmination of the two and where I hope we will be able to get to, where I believe we have to get to in order to save our planet.
Cathy Dunbar
www.facebook.com/cathy.dunbar1
The End of the Pier Show on canvas! Working with a group of people called Little Blue Dot we created the End of the Pier show, aimed at encouraging people to get to be there to sort out their local issues, and to talk about the climate crisis. We did not get the permission to hold a static event due to COVID 19, but instead took up the pier and walked through Cambridge, stopping to for speakers to speak, singers to sing and discussions to be had, finishing with a socially distanced People’s Assembly 2050 if nothing is done, the sea levels could rise 10metres and this is what our City and surrounding area will look like.
Karen Kellet
www.facebook.com/cathy.dunbar1
Karen Kellet is a Children’s book illustrator, art teacher, and a graduate of Falmouth college of Arts and Anglia Ruskin University. These pastel paintings on paper were created during lockdown, when I have spent much more time in nature, particularly around water. I swim in the rivers around Cambridge as a mermaid and I am concerned about keeping the rivers clean so that people can enjoy wild swimming. I find being by or in water very therapeutic and want to help preserve rivers for generations to come.
Oblique Arts is a registered charity based in Cambridge, UK.
Charity no. 1142653
