Each year, the Friends Exhibition offers a wonderful snapshot of the talent, imagination and creative energy within the Friends of the RWA community.
This year’s exhibition brought together an impressive range of work, from atmospheric painting and drawing to textile pieces full of movement, memory and invention. Six prizes were awarded: Best in Show, three Selector’s Choice awards, the Gallery Award sponsored by Huw Richards Evans Contemporary Art, and the People’s Choice Award, voted for by visitors.
We asked the winning artists to tell us a little more about their work – what inspired it, how it was made, and what winning meant to them.
Best in Show
Charlotte Moore – First Act
Charlotte Moore’s First Act draws on a lifelong fascination with theatre – in particular “the revelation as the curtains part and the contrast of spotlights and darkness.”
But the inspiration behind the painting also comes from another powerful source. Years ago, during an artist’s residency at MOCCA in Massachusetts, Charlotte visited the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, where she encountered John Singer Sargent’s celebrated painting The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit.
“This one painting has been the dominant influence of my painting career,” she says. “In this little painting, The First Act, Sargent is in there too.”
Winning Best in Show was, she says, “thrilling”, especially given the strength of the exhibition.
“It is a real boost to my confidence as an artist. I’ll be entering the RWA Open, hoping that this time I’ll be accepted.”
The Gallery Award – Sponsored by Huw Richards Evans Contemporary Art
Jane Boot – Along the Path
Jane Boot’s Along the Path is one of a series of four artworks exploring empty landscapes: coastline, farmland, wild walks and abandoned land.
“All are imaginary,” she says, “but are no doubt evolved from past memories.”
The works were created on box wooden panels that Jane bought in a “fantastic art shop” in Western Australia. It was her first time using wood as a base, though the experiment only began once she had returned to the UK.
“I found the hard surface worked incredibly well with my style of layering and scratching back using acrylics, pen and oil pastel,” she says. “I am now experimenting on larger sizes!”
Jane was surprised and delighted to learn she had won the Gallery Award.
“It was a huge surprise when I was approached by Huw Richards Evans and his son Billy to tell me that I had won. I feel very honoured to have been given this opportunity to show my work in this beautiful gallery in Clifton Village.”
People’s Choice – voted by visitors
Aly Dalrymple – Wild
Aly Dalrymple’s Wild, winner of the People’s Choice Award, is a playful and warm textile work that creates a dreamlike world through layers of stitch and movement.
“I wanted to create a dreamlike world, sending a message of change and growth,” she says.
Aly draws inspiration from her childhood in the mountains of North Wales, as well as from nature, folklore and environmental themes.
“I have a deep appreciation for nature and I take images from my surroundings and feed them into my artwork. When making Wild, I thought a lot about the environment, wildlife and folklore.”
The piece was created using watercolour paint and free machine embroidery on natural calico – a combination of media that, Aly says, developed organically.
“Textiles is diverse. I love to play with ideas, and feel a sense of freeness and flow. When making Wild, I focused on texture. There are many layers of stitch bringing the piece to life.”
Winning the People’s Choice Award was especially meaningful because the prize was voted for by visitors.
“I was very happy to receive the People’s Choice Award. I hope Wild spoke to the viewers and provoked feelings and questions.”
Selectors’ Choices
Celia Witchard – Bus Stop Peak District
Celia Witchard’s striking pencil drawing Bus Stop Peak District began with a dramatic journey across the Peaks.
“I was driving over the Peaks last spring to visit a cousin, in what was becoming a white-knuckle experience in a gale, blizzard and hail storm all combined, over some of the most dramatic terrain in England,” she says.
Then, suddenly, the sun broke through.
“The sun pierced the clouds, lighting up the hills beyond, with that lonely bus stop – with no shelter! – and the wind-battered fence silhouetted against the sky.”
Celia originally intended the drawing as a preliminary value study for a later painting, but became absorbed by the textures and tonal values.
“I felt it captured the elemental essence of the time and place, without the need for colour,” she says.
After years working as an illustrator using Photoshop and other digital media, she has found herself drawn back to pencil.
“There is something so pleasing about the feel and sound of pencil on paper, which for me, as fabulous as an iPad or Wacom tablet are, cannot compete with the experience of creating an analogue image with the most simple of tools: some graphite inside a stick!”
Winning the prize, she says, was a great honour.
“I felt very honoured to be selected, especially from such a fantastic array of art and artists. Winning the prize has been a big boost.”
Valerie Steel – Screen
Valerie Steel’s Screen is a work concerned with atmosphere, ambiguity and the intangible.
“I am interested in creating an atmosphere rather than an accurate depiction,” she says. “I hope to capture a sense of something beyond the visible, an image that seems like a memory, an ambiguity.”
The title Screen suggests something hidden or protected, but also leaves room for the viewer’s own projection.
Valerie does not begin with a fixed image in mind. Instead, the work evolves through a process of discovery.
“I start with a colour or a shape, almost like setting myself a puzzle. Then the clues are gradually revealed, an internal logic becomes apparent, and a solution is found. Or not, all too frequently!”
For Screen, she made a surface of plaster of Paris, dropped ink onto it while it was wet, and scratched marks into the surface to create texture. Most of the remaining work was then built up in acrylic once the surface had dried.
Winning a prize was, she says, a delight.
“It feels great to have perhaps managed to communicate something intangible in the way I had hoped for.”
Elliot Coffin – Rainbows and Ridges
Elliot Coffin’s Rainbows and Ridges grew out of his interest in surplus materials.
“I work a lot with surplus materials, and these are off-cuts from carpentry work,” he says. “Off-cuts are always interesting to me — these beautiful little pieces of material that aren’t really useful for anything, so I save them. They either end up in the wood burner or as sculptures.”
Elliot has always drawn and painted in old books, and says he is drawn to surfaces that “already have some life or history.”
“These surfaces became very appealing as they are already full of character,” he says, “and I see each face of each block as a page in a sketchbook.”
The work also has an unusually playful, interactive history.
“I first made these at home on my boat,” he explains. “I made them chaotically and playfully, and when working on bits of wood they often get scattered all over the floor and I turn them over regularly, moving quickly, then changing from paint to crayon to marker etc.”
The pieces were originally made for an impromptu installation. “Each one has a powerful magnet on it and can be attached to metal. I first installed them on a footbridge, and people would be confused by these protruding pieces of wood, and then they realised they could move!”
They then went into an exhibition where visitors could interact with them. “They started off on the floor, then moved to the girders in the room, and out onto the metal railings outside.”
Winning a Selector’s Choice prize came as “a really nice surprise”.
“It is always nice to be recognised for something,” Elliot says. “I nearly didn’t make it into the exhibition at all as the temporary base plate I made to carry it in was confused to be part of the sculpture — which it wasn’t!”
One of the prizes was a voucher for Niche Frames, which Elliot plans to use to buy frame inserts. “I tend to make the frames for prints myself, so I’m very grateful.”
The Friends Exhibition is always one of the highlights of the Friends calendar, giving artists the chance to show their work in a professional gallery setting and share it with the wider RWA community.
Congratulations to all six prizewinners – and to everyone who took part in this year’s exhibition.
The Floating Circle 
Great artwork!
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