RELATIVE VALUES
- May 7
- 4 min read
SIXTEEN GALLERY | 7 – 13 MAY
MARY F HARRISON, GEOFFREY HARRISON AND NICKY MILLINGTON PRESENT RELATIVE VALUES.
A COLLABORATION BETWEEN MOTHER, SON AND DAUGHTER: ALL PRACTICING ARTISTS WITH DIFFERENT STYLES
Coming together to form Relative Values, Mary Harrison works in handmade watercolours on handmade paper to produce her colourful abstracts. Geoffrey Harrison is a figurative artist depicting our modern experience of food through traditional still life oil painting. Nicky Millington focuses on colour, texture and movement in her multi-layered acrylic botanical works.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
MARY F HARRISON
Often bright, sometimes earth toned, Mary F Harrison's abstract and semi-abstract watercolours and drawings reflect on a life spent travelling, working, studying, engaging with growing things and always being aware of both the beauty and the ugliness of our world. Inspired by things as diverse as a eucalyptus leaf or the sight and sound of a magpie, builders banging or the movement of a stream, the forms arrive through a process of drawing with graphite onto textured handmade paper. The friction arising from the combination of materials ‘hooks’ the image from her subconscious and draws it out onto the paper. On a good day!
Born in England in 1947, and educated in England and in Australia, Mary Harrison trained as a painter and Medical Artist. Her early career was combined with raising a family. She worked freelance as a Medical Artist and painted portraits to commission, whilst volunteering in Primary schools, teaching Adult Education classes and occupational therapy work with adults in a local day centre. During this time, she also gained an MA in History.
In the 1990s, Mary’s career changed direction. The deviation of her work from life was marked by her love of pure line and pure form, rather than what they represent. Attending several residential workshops and working collaboratively with other artists has been invaluable in her development as a working artist. For nearly 10 years, she worked as part of an artists' studio group, and then moved her practice part-time to Normandy where she created sculptures.
Now fully back in South Manchester, she works from her garden studio, enjoying walks which feed her observation and internalising of natural rhythms and colour combinations. The content of her later work hints at current national and world events. She delights in the fact that both her children are now accomplished and successful artists. Mary has exhibited steadily in Britain and France, and her work is in private collections in USA, Australia, UK and France. It can also be seen at The New Hall Women's Art Collection, in Cambridge, UK.
GEOFFREY HARRISON
" The food paintings are partly an homage to the tradition of food still life, such as Dutch Golden Age painting, but they also reflect modern attitudes to food. Each of the paintings has something that fixes the date in the past few decades: the elastic band, the price label or the plastic wrap.
It’s a seductive effect that plastic has on the surface of food, effacing the natural texture and creating a false sheen, which may protect, but also causes plastic waste and pollution which we’re not good at dealing with. How removed have we become from the natural origin of our food? Particularly with availability out of season, like eating asparagus in winter, do we feel further disconnect, especially when we live and work mostly indoors in airconditioned rooms in unrelenting urban areas, receiving little indication of season, weather and climate.
This work isn’t only a pessimistic look at food habits though, it’s also a dip into nostalgia. 'I have very positive memories of eating canned peach slices as a child. Their cool, tangy sweetness is very evocative for me. They’re far removed from fresh fruit but reassuring at the same time. Perhaps because they’re a product of the modern era, and so am I'. "
Geoffrey Harrison (b.1974) is a British figurative artist. Originally from Manchester, he lived and studied in Japan for several years after completing a first degree in Printmaking at the School of Art in Hull. He returned to the UK to complete a Masters' degree in London (SOAS). He now lives and works in Bristol.
He is known as a realist painter, approaching the traditional genre of still life with a critical, contemporary context and has exhibited these paintings at the Mall Galleries, NEAC, Discerning Eye and The British Art Prize.
As a portraitist, he is a member of the Contemporary British Portrait Painters collective (CBPP) and has exhibited work at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists. Portrait sitters have included Broadcaster Samira Ahmed, Olympian Dame Katherine Grainger and Actor Mathew Goode.
Geoffrey was a semi-finalist on Sky Arts' Portrait Artist of the Year and was a guest artist on the Sky Portrait Artist of the Week. As well as undertaking commissions, he has artwork in important collections including Soho House and The University of London. He was Artist in Residence at Barts Pathology Museum at and was awarded a Leverhulme residency at The Royal Veterinary College.
NICKY MILLINGTON
Nicky is inspired by natural landscapes, particularly gardens with their layered foliage and often sculptural plant forms. She seeks out colours, textures and movement in nature and recreates these using several layers of acrylic paint, or by scratching through to reveal hidden surfaces beneath. Nicky often works over old artwork, repurposing canvases, boards and paper. Sometimes what results from reworking a surface is not predictable and becomes a more abstract exploration.
Nicky (b. 1972) is self-taught and has been developing her skills as an artist since she was a toddler. Surrounded by an artistic family (mum and dad were both medical illustrators), this was quite easy, and she has always loved creating. In 2012 she was offered a job she couldn’t refuse: to set up, run and teach in an art department at a large primary school in Cairo, Egypt. She has never looked back. In 2018, back in the UK, she started teaching art to children and adults from her home, and now runs a successful art teaching business, ’The Art Studio’, here in Cheltenham.
Nicky is regularly a judge in local en plein air art competitions and exhibits her work around Cheltenham. She tries to find time to create her own art as much as she can, usually inspired by walks in the countryside and visiting gardens. Nicky often paints to commission.
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