Untitled, 2023, Oil and Charcoal on Canvas Board, 40x30cm

Jake Quinlan

Jake Quinlan is a contemporary artist living and working in South Wales. His practice is based on the lifestyle and emotional state of the common workingman, expressed through gestural abstraction. Quinlan received a first-class-honours BA from the University of South Wales and was awarded a 2-year fellowship with 56 Group Wales, an exhibiting group of contemporary professional artists working across a wide range of media and concerns. 

“In modern social climates, the common workingman continuously feels worthless and undervalued, often invisible to outer society. The struggle to provide a life and a sense of stability for loved ones all too often claims victims into the whirlpool of drink and cards. From my own experience, it feels like we fall into a catacomb of resentment toward ourselves and others. This chaos and desperation are what my work aims to capture. In the literal imagery, I use abstraction to record an expressive moment of angst and frustration that accumulates through the working week. I like to think of my paintings as artistic contradictions: marks rioting with anger and aggression, and overall compositions somehow sitting in an uncomfortable silence, absorbing you while simultaneously rejecting you. Combining various material types and applications, the paintings build until an initial emotion has exhausted itself. As soon as the painting is simultaneously intimidating and comforting to me, only then is it deemed a finished work.”

’Monsieur Curiosité.’ Stoneware, 28cm tall

Gary Turner

Living in Colwyn Bay, North Wales, Gary enjoys creating ceramic sculptures. With a passion for walking in the mountains and along the magnificent Welsh coastline, he also experiments with elements and textures straight from the surrounding landscapes. He also gains inspiration from influential artists like Salvador Dali, Roy Lichtenstein, and Tamara de Lempicka to create expressive, thought-provoking ceramic figures. The use of stoneware clays, bright colours, bold textures, and repetitive patterns have become a strong aspect of his unique characters.

Gary is a self-taught ceramicist that enjoys the freedom of sculpting - not being confined to the edges of a canvas, and the wide possibilities that working with clay allows for. He describes his sculpting process as spontaneous with little planning in hopes that his art captures a snapshot of the moment. He has most recently been awarded highly commended at The Royal Cambrian Academy’s open exhibition 2025.

“From an early age I had always enjoyed making things and in the 70’s before the mobile phone and 200 channels on the TV, an empty cornflake box, sticky tape and some paint was all you needed. That, or I would be in my fathers shed ruining his nicely sharpened wood working chisels.

Art and craft have always been an important aspect of my life and in 2010 I enrolled on a Pottery evening course at our local college. Modelling with clay seemed like a natural thing to do and I found the expressiveness that you could achieve working in 3D very enjoyable.  

In 2021 after everything that we had all been through with Covid during the previous year, I was presented with another major setback and was diagnosed with incurable Neuroendocrine cancer. I was unable to work for two years and then decided to retire. Not being able to work was a huge change and I needed something to do that would help me to process and focus my emotions. My own life had turned into a surreal one.

During this period, I rediscovered clay and started making sculptures with little expressive faces that undoubtedly reflected the mood that I was in. I prefer art that makes you really stop and ask, ’What’s it all about, what’s the message and what’s going on in the mind of the artist.’