The history of Britain is intricately woven with the history of textiles.  The energy for this innovation was led by female designers.  This lecture celebrates their vision, influences and determination which brought contemporary art into the home.

The Director of Fashion and Textile Gallery Gray M.C.A, Ashley is a recognised textile expert, specialising in Modern Artist Textiles, their design and history. He has published articles and essays and sits on committees of leading International Art Fairs, as well as giving lectures.
  Ashley explores the textile innovators of the early to
mid-20th century and the fusion between the applied, decorative and fine arts.

The talk explores how following World War II there was a desire for change, colour, and inspiration in the home. This energy and innovation were led by female textile designers destined to revolutionise design internationally from the 1950s to the 1970s.
It also celebrates their vision, their influences and their determination that successfully brought modern and contemporary art into the home through their designs and thereby democratising modern art for the first time by making it literally part of the furniture.

Christmas would not be Christmas without music.  What we listen to is both fascinating and transformative, it never fails to trigger a sense of wonderment.  Raymond shares the tales using both sound recordings and film clips.

Bonnard is one of the most popular of modern artists...starting in Paris, influenced by Toulouse Lautrec, concentrating on nudes after the First World War.  After moving to the south of France he concentrated on the colourful landscapes of Provence.

Please come and join us for our Annual Lunch at The Commodore Hotel, Instow.

Unfortunately the lecturer has had to cancel the published engagement. We have managed to secure this exciting replacement.

This group of artists were not all native Glaswegians but were based in Glasgow at the end of the nineteenth century. They benefitted from the success of industry and its wealthy patrons. As painters they were well aware of the radical trends in Paris particularly the simplified forms of the Post Impressionists. They wanted to be free of anecdote in their work and to be allowed to concentrate on colour, light and brushwork appropriate to their subjects. The artists Guthrie, Lavery, Crawhall and Arthur Melville and others will be discussed in this talk.

Alice Foster has lectured regularly at Oxford University Department for Continuing Education and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

Avant Garde painter, designer, colourist, mother and muse.  Bell was at the heart of the Bloomsbury Group...a set described by Dororthy Parker as living in squares and painting in triangles.  Come and hear more about this little known artist sister of Virginia Woolfe.

Kathleen Scott, widow of Captain Robert Falcon Scott, was the most significant British Sculptor before Barbara Hepworth.  This lecture explores the legacy which celebrates male sacrifice as an artistic theme.  Kathleen later shocked with her bold sculpture of exuberant male muscles.

This lecture revisits the story of Ratty, Mole, Badger and Toad, through the eyes of the more than ninety artists who have illustrated this much loved book, such as E.H. Shepherd and Arthur Rackman.