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Celebrating innovation and diversity, United in Art demonstrates the depth and range of work originating from the United Kingdom. Ranging from the figurative to the abstract and enjoying qualities of spontaneity, color and rhythm the works on display teem with energy as they capture both the form and spirit of their subjects.
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Maggie C
 
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The mysterious and violent workings of subterranean volcanoes hold an intense fascination for British artist, Maggie C. “Through my paintings,” she states, “I’m trying to connect with nature and capture the energy that exists beneath our feet.” Her paintings are brilliantly colored schematics that explode and fracture from a central point on the canvas evoking the rifts between tectonic plates where extreme temperatures exude from the earth’s core. Her line-work and riveting color schemes aptly serve to capture this hidden power beneath the surface of the earth’s crust. The paintings are primordial in appearance, neither topical nor a depiction of actual forms, yet they readily suggest these natural, enigmatic forces. She paints with acrylic and mixed media, building up a rich three-dimensional surface that furthers associates her work with the rugged contours of rock. Maggie Cs’ work has been exhibited in the England and New York in addition to private collections in Europe, Australia and the United States. Maggie C lives and works in England.
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"Lava Burst"
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"Harmonic Vibration."
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Andrew Cooper
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Andrew Cooper's sculptural installations are dramatic challenges to our perceptions of rationality, technology, and political power. A fascination with optical illusions and psychological dislocation pervade his work, as well as the moral questions of individuality in the age of science. Cooper's work is conceptual in that it is brought forth by specific ideas, but it is his textural choices, his palette, and his experience as a designer of major architectural works for corporate and public spaces, which bring forth the visceral power of his installations. Cooper's works have consistently exploited the qualities of glass: its fragility, its transparency, its role as mirror or canvas etched with floating text. His use of a strong black-white palette anchors these transparent installations and brings forth a tense vision of polarization. We are subjected to Andrew Cooper's manipulations, as we are any exercise of power, and we step out of his visions as if through a looking glass. Illusions and disorientation, brought about by light and vision--these are the tools, and the inspiration, for Andrew Cooper's investigations into space-time-reality.
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"Allegory of Abundance"
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"Between a Rock and A Hard Place"
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Su Goddard
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Rich swaths of color flow together like fertile alluvial floodplains in the work of British artist Su Goddard. She found in abstraction the means to express certain elements of life’s journey and the human condition, speaking through amorphous fields of radiant color. Her paintings create a direct exchange between artwork and audience, allowing a unique message to be gathered from the unfolding visual harmonies. The poured paint methods of Helen Frankenthaler have had a palpable influence in Goddard’s work, as well as the art of ancient Egypt and the cave paintings in Lascaux. Nature and the elements also play a central role in her process. “My watercolours have a species of originality,” Goddard explains. “Their evolution shares, very often, in those natural processes all around us which are dependent on the activity of water.”
Su Goddard attended the Oxford School of Art during the vibrant creative atmosphere of the 1960s. She has worked as an interior decorator and illustrator, dividing her time between residences in the South West of France and Oxford, England.
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"Cosmic Catalyst"
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"Hecate's Night Riders"
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Baron Charlie Lush
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"Women on the Boat"
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"Tweed in Autumn"
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Maureen Oliver
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Maureen Ann Oliver's paintings are evocative, lushly colored works that tell the viewers stories relating the drama of the human condition. Faces flicker with light and shadow; sensuous brushwork adds texture and nuance to each expression. Oliver has been interested in religion and spirituality from a young age and her work reflects this passion for the spiritual world. Her works suggest a longing for a world beyond the senses. Yet, paradoxically, we enter this world through our senses as we gaze at the intensity of Oliver's color palette and loose, painterly brushstrokes. Oliver's sensitivity as an artist extends to her audience as well. She states, "I would like my art to reach out to people and touch them spiritually and emotionally." Gazing at her work, most viewers will feel Oliver has succeeded in this goal. Maureen Ann Oliver has exhibited her work widely in England and currently lives and works in London
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"Vincent in the Yellow House"
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"The Ladder"
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John Porro
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"Tell Me What's Going To Happen"
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"Mikki"
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Lee Robertson
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Scottish painter, Lee Robertson has a talent for capturing the nuances of human drama. Her works are a visceral reminder of the reality that each person struggles to attain in many forms throughout a lifetime. Robertson is an erudite artist who appreciates the historical progression of painting. She applies her oil paints in delicious strokes; clothing, flesh, and her surroundings have a sumptuous quality that displays affection and study of texture. However, the paint is a mere vehicle for the larger message to come forth. Adding to the furtive quality of her works, Robertson’s titles are both descriptive and elusive, adding a pleasurable dimension to her already compelling works. The central characters are gripping but leave a sense that a dramatic sequence of events looms just beyond the picture plane. “I want my art to give every viewer something different,” she states. “I want them to look at my art and make up their own mind what is going on.” Robertson lives and works in Scotland.
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"Sanctuary"
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"It's All Going On"
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Mohammed Yasin Saddique
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Self-taught artist Mohammed Yasin Saddique, who has been painting since the age of 16, has allowed travel to inspire him in his art. His paintings of not only the artistic and cultural centers of Rome, Paris and New York but also Dubai City and Jhelum City, Pakistan, suggest an urban experience distilled down to basics: Saddique transforms the city into cubist grids invested with multilayered shading. Saddique’s cityscapes also suggest stained glass. Both opaque and crystalline, each visual interpretation lives within its own unique range of colors and moods--very much like cities themselves. His current series of facial studies, influenced by an exploration of Pakistan, adds a primitivist style to his oeuvre. Saddique aims to capture “the story of anguish and hurt hidden behind a face,” much as a city can reveal its history in the patterns Saddique uncovers. Mohammed Yasin Saddique’s unique and potent works are in private collections in England, Austria, Italy, Germany, America, France, Belgium, India, and Pakistan.
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"Paris City"
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"Rome City"
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Jonathan Sanders
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The sensibilities of Jonathan Sanders are informed by place. He has the traveler's eye for the idiosyncrasy of each locale in the moment it is encountered—the sunlight of a cloudy autumn noontime, a wash of desert gloaming on a waterhole, the lope of camels and the stride of elephants. His impressions of the African savannah are not attempts at mimetic representation, yet they bring to mind the best action photography of National Geographic. "I begin with a quick monotone composition," he says of his acrylics on board. "As soon as possible the color is applied, layer upon layer. It is an impression, a sense of place and time that I am trying to portray." He makes his home in the UK, whose ever-shifting weather pushes him to create. Sanders has been exhibiting since the early 1980s, and his work turns up everywhere from Ikea stores to CD covers for the likes of Sergio Mendes and Ladysmith Black Mombazo.
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"To the Water"
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"Into the Blue"
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Patrick Walshe
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"Scenes from the City The Lake"
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"Midwinter: The Second Walk"
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