ARTISTS Pat Kelly, Maureen Kennaugh and Jennifer Payne have united to stage a joint exhibition in the Centenary Centre, Peel.
Three by Ten is a mixed media and textile exhibition which opened at the end of February and continues until April 8
Maureen explained: ‘The title refers to the fact that the exhibition is of contemporary, abstract and figurative work and is the work of three artists who met while studying City and Guild’s Stitched Textiles at the Isle of Man College.
‘And it is 10 years since all three completed Part One of that course, with Pat and I going on to complete the Diploma in Stitched Textiles.’
This exhibition features some of their pre-course work, some examples of work completed for the course, but predominantly their post City and Guild work. It could therefore be seen as an early career retrospective.
• Pat is a mixed media artist who loves to experiment and particularly enjoys working with plant-dyed fibres; dyes which are prepared from a vast amount of material from her forest garden.
She likes to research widely before beginning a new textile piece and this is evident in much of her work on show. Some of her pieces are from the joint exhibition she had in the Hodgson Loom Gallery last year. The theme for that show was Amulets and Talismans. It involved worldwide research from the Isle of Man to American Indians and included beliefs and traditions from ancient history.
Since completing the diploma, Pat has not only become a prolific artist but an enthusiastic lecturer and offers workshops on a variety of mixed media techniques and the topics of her research. Three years in a row, she has won prizes in the Hodgson Loom Gallery annual competition and was also runner up in the Sayle Gallery Summer Show in 2011 with a colourful piece inspired by her visit to Marrakesh.
• Maureen is a textile artist, painting with needle, stitch and thread to create richly colourful and textural pieces; largely using free machine embroidery as the major medium with felted and painted backgrounds.
Between 1995 and 2002 Maureen was a freelance designer/maker, producing designs for magazines such as Classic Stitches and Needlework magazines as well as pieces for a couple of design collection books.
She has exhibited on and off-island, winning the Best Manx Subject in the 1994 Singer and Friedlander competition held at the Manx Museum. She received the first prize in the Metal Thread section of the Royal School of Needlework’s exhibition at the Knitting and Stitching Show in London in 1995, second prize in the Madeira 1996 professional class of the competition and the Mixed Media prize at the Hodgson Loom’s annual competition in 2011.
As well as displaying her work in Peel, Maureen will also be hosting a solo exhibition at the Hodgson Loom Gallery from March 16 to April 13 with the theme I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside. There she will be exhibiting a mix of figurative, floral and some abstract work.
• Jenny Payne has been exhibiting and selling her work in the Isle of Man Art Society exhibitions, Sayle Gallery and Hodgson Loom Gallery for some time.
Her work is very considered and detailed and encompasses pen and ink as well as textiles.
Like Pat and Maureen, Jenny’s work has developed from traditional textile techniques of embroidery and dressmaking to seeing textiles as a serious artistic medium.
This exhibition is an eclectic mix of techniques and styles so it should offer something for everybody.