Art Connections

Event Information

Meet three artists - Sharon Drew, Hugh Hamshaw Thomas, and Alison Chaplin for a chat about their work and find out about each of their different processes and practices and how Epping Forest has inspired their creative pursuits. A rare opportunity to see behind the scenes, works on view will include abstract and landscape paintings and digital prints plus sketchbooks and small studies.

Contributors

Epping Forest Heritage Trust

A charity and a membership organisation with a big mission to inspire people about Epping Forest, and to conserve and protect its irreplaceable biodiversity, culture, and heritage now and for generations to come. We operate across the whole of Epping Forest, covering 6,000 acres stretching from Manor Park in East London to Epping in Essex.

efht.org.uk

@EppingForestHT

Sharon Drew

Sharon is a London-based artist whose process-based abstract paintings respond to her experience of the natural world. The works show a confident use of colour, are often large-scale and employ a range of approaches. From diluted sweeping gestural brush strokes to smooth rubbed back surfaces revealing older detailed layers, she seeks visual metaphors for the sensation of immersion in an environment rather than depicting a particular place.

Hugh Hamshaw Thomas

Hugh is a locally based artist whose work primarily responds to the surroundings of Epping Forest. Hamshaw Thomas makes large-scale digital prints that beg questions as to how landscape is seen and represented. The photographs present as objects pre-dating the birth of photography, inverting the seemingly empirical gaze of the camera to question ideas of memory, nostalgia and loss.

Alison Chaplin

Alison did her training at Walthamstow School of Art. After a few years teaching art she became a full-time artist in 2002. Epping Forest has always been a feature in Alison’s life and has given her comfort, joy, solace and excitement. The Forest has offered her the vocabulary to express her relationships across a whole range of encounters. Some of these are formal; her use of colour, contrast, scale and mark-making and some ore personal; family, friendship, the passing of time.

Location of event

Start at: Upper Walthamstow Studios, 15 Upper Walthamstow Road London E17 3QG. This is about 5 minutes walk from Wood Street Station (Overground)

End at: Studio no 2. Address: 1 Beacontree Avenue, Walthamstow, E17 4BT