Ashington is a town and civil parish in Northumberland, England, with a population of 27,864 at the 2011 Census. It was once a centre of the coal mining industry. The town is 15 miles (24 km) north of Newcastle upon Tyne, west of the A189 and bordered to the south by the River Wansbeck. The North Sea coast at Newbiggin-by-the-Sea is 3 miles (5 km) away.
Marjorie Helen Arnfield, was an English artist who specialised in both industrial and rural landscapes, painting in oil, acrylic and watercolour. Her landscapes, particularly her paintings of Provence and Spain, are characterised by vivid colours and an impressionistic style. In an interview in the magazine Artists & Illustrators in 1998, Arnfield described her palette of colours, which included ochres, burnt siennas, cadmium, viridian, reds and blues, as "colours that sing".
Bruce McLean is a Scottish sculptor, performance artist and painter.
Sir Christopher Mark Le Brun PPRA is a British artist, known primarily as a painter. President of the Royal Academy of Arts from 2011 to December 2019, Le Brun was knighted in the 2021 New Year Honours "for services to the arts".
The Ashington Group was a small society of artists from Ashington, Northumberland, composed largely of mine workers. They met regularly between 1934 and 1983 to encourage their progress. Although most of the men had no formal artistic training, the Group and its work became celebrated in the British art world of the 1930s and 1940s.
Geoff Diego Litherland, the son of the geologist Martin Litherland, is a painter working internationally, based in the UK.
Oliver Percival Kilbourn was a British coal miner, painter, and founding member of the Ashington Group.
Sacha Craddock is an independent art critic, writer & curator based in London. Craddock is co-founder of Artschool Palestine, co-founder or the Contemporary Art Award and council member of the Abbey Awards in Painting at the British School at Rome, Trustee of the Shelagh Cluett Trust, and President of the International Association of Art Critics AICA UK. She was chair of the Board of New Contemporaries and selection process from 1996 until December 2021.
Frank Avray Wilson was a British artist, author and vegetarian. He was one of the first British artists to use Tachist or action painting techniques.
William Feaver is a British art critic, curator, artist and lecturer. From 1975–1998 he was the chief art critic of the Observer, and from 1994 a visiting professor at Nottingham Trent University. His book The Pitmen Painters inspired the play of the same name by Lee Hall.
Nicholas Middleton is an English artist. He studied at the London Guildhall University 1993. In 1994, at the Winchester School of Art where he was awarded a BA Honours Fine Art in 1997. In 2006 he was the Visitors' Choice prizewinner at John Moores Painting Prize 24 and in 2010 Middleton was a Prizewinner and the Visitors' Choice Award prizewinner at John Moores Painting Prize 2010. His paintings are "primarily influenced by the experience of the urban environment as a visual arena where unexpected juxtapositions occur". He is a member of Contemporary British Painting.
Marguerite Horner is a British artist who won the 2018 British Women Artist Award. Her paintings aim to investigate, among other things, notions of transience, intimacy, loss and hope. She uses the external world as a trigger or metaphor for these experiences and through a period of gestation and distillation, makes a series of intuitive decisions that lead the work towards completion.
Annabel Dover is a British artist. She has a BA (Hons) in fine art from Newcastle University (1998), an MA in fine art from Central Saint Martins, London (2002), and a teaching qualification (PGCE) in art and design from the University of Cambridge (2003).
Contemporary British Painting is an artists' collective of over 60 members, founded in 2013 by Robert Priseman with the assistance of Simon Carter. It is a platform for contemporary painting in the UK "seeking to explore and promote critical context and dialogue in current painting practice through a series of solo and group exhibitions; talks, publications and an art prize". ‘Contemporary British Painting’ also facilitates the donation of paintings to art collections, galleries and museums in the UK and around the world.
Julian Brown is a British artist. He lives and works in London. He studied at Liverpool John Moores University, England (1993–96) and Royal Academy Schools, London (1998–2001). His work is heavily influenced by childhood visions and the folk-art from his Polish mother. He was long-listed for the John Moores Painting Prize in 2016 and in 2012 was shortlisted for the Marmite Prize in Painting IV (2012–13). Brown has exhibited his work nationally and internationally and is a member of Contemporary British Painting.
Lucy Cox in Chard, Somerset, UK, is a British abstract artist and curator.
David Watson is an artist and former shipyard worker born in 1944 at Albion Street, South Bank near Middlesbrough, UK. He attended Middlesbrough College where he studied art along with fellow South Bank artists Len Tabner and David Mulholland. At the age of nineteen earning a living became a priority and Watson went to work at Smiths Dock shipyard on the River Tees as a "red leader" painting the hulls of ships. Watson continued with his art for decades although remained largely unknown until the Kirkleatham Museum in Redcar submitted images of his work to the BBC's "Your Painting" website. In 2012 they were noticed by Mark Parham who now acts as Watson's curator. In 2014 the National Football Museum in Manchester acquired Watson's "Matchday at Ayresome Park".
Mandy Payne is a member of the Contemporary British Painting group and is an artist with a primary interest in portraying the regeneration of inner city environments and the transitory nature of urban communities. Her themes include the contrasts between twentieth century inner-city social housing and modern gentrification.
Jacqui Hallum is a contemporary artist. She is the 2018 John Moores Painting Prize recipient. She has exhibited throughout the UK but also abroad. Hallum's solo display—entitled The View from the Top of the Pyramid—was exhibited at the Walker Art Gallery in 2019/2020.
