Biographies
Denise Wyllie
Denise Wyllie’s artwork deftly reveals subconscious feelings about life while she is observing and noting the subtly changing light play of the English landscape. She shows her underlying response to the world in these expressive depictions of nature.
Wyllie is an artist who is unafraid to take on huge creative projects, ambitious in scale and concept. She utilizes painting and printmaking mixed media alongside photographic processes and film to convey aspects of the human condition. She has spent 30 years as an artist focusing on landscape, creating artworks in favourite secret gardens and isolated landscapes as well as human landscapes – such as scientific establishments and community groups – for those at the edge of society. One large-scale art project is “The Angel of the Lee Valley” — a monumental land art piece, comprising a chalk drawing of a guardian in female form the size of a football pitch — that could be viewed both from the ground, a tower and also from 4 tethered hot air balloons; to enable the earth bound, for a rare, fleeting moment, to swap places with the angels and gaze on one from above. This was to herald a message of love for the local natural environment for the new millennium and aimed to encourage Londoners from all communities, to come together to protect their public open spaces.
Wyllie studied drawing and printmaking at top London universities including, postgrad at Central Saint Martins’ London with Norman Ackroyd and as Research Assistant at the Slade School of Fine Art, London with Barto dos Santos and Stanley Jones. She also holds a Masters degree from Wimbledon School of Art.
She was the first artist to exhibit and exchange with Russian artists during Glasnost. This led to the foundation of Art Kontakt Russia/UK — an independent, international group of thinkers and artists, who now head and thrive in the leading art establishments in Karelia.
She also took part in organizing exhibitions and activities as a committee member of The Printmakers Council for eight years.
Denise Wyllie’s paintings and prints feature in museums and private collections in the United Kingdom, Russia, Germany, Puerto Rico and the USA.
Clare O Hagan
Irish born Clare O Hagan is an award winning visual artist and filmmaker who lives in London. The artist creates and produces art projects, ambitious in scale and concept, conveying complex aspects of the human condition and the world she inhabits.
Clare O Hagan’s artworks have been described as bold, irreverent, imaginative and truly poetic.The starting point for this Irish artist is her close and continual examination of the nude through life drawing. From this practice Clare O Hagan organises her world visually and philosophically.
O Hagan utilizes a variety of media which include: printmaking, drawing, altered art, still photography, film, moving image, and textiles.
Most recently, O Hagan’s printmaking artwork is currently on a UK gallery tour, with her Summer 2018 exhibition ”Embracing Women” in Las Vegas, USA just completed. In 2017, O Hagan received an Honourable Mention Japan at the Awagami International Miniature Print Exhibition.
Clare O Hagan has twenty years experience in publishing and graphic design. She worked on Screen International, the premier source of information for the global film business. Clare was winner of the Managing Directors Award for Excellence whilst working at International Thomson Business Publishing.
As an independent publisher, she published the critically acclaimed Irelantis a fascinating book showing the Irish artist, Sean Hillen’s invented world.
Her graphic design work features internationally. As manager of Empire Interactive’s (a leading computer games developer/publisher) design studio, she endeavoured to create excellence in brand design and management. In 2001 Clare had a three month installation of her art work “Beauty at the Tate”, at Tate Modern, London. This installation was her response to this beautiful building by the Thames, housing in her opinion, dismal work. As director of The Bertold Gallery, London, Clare curated many successful exhibitions promoting artists working in London.
