Visitors pick their favourites in annual Open Art exhibition
VISITORS to a town centre art exhibition have chosen their favourites.
The Macclesfield Open Art exhibition was held at the Silk Museum on Park Lane over the last two months.
It saw 169 works displayed including efforts by Geoff Beard, Wayne Blackhurst, Helen Brocklehurst and Penny Broadbent.
Other artists that took part in the successful event were Patty Callaghan, Sue Guildford, Hifumi Ogasahara and Sonia Shepherd.
The winner of the Visitors’ Choice Award, was selected using votes from visitors.
The artist, who scoops £200 in prize money was Marilyn Rhind for her semi-abstract landscape painting ‘Summertime’.
In second place was Ann Robertson with her lino print ‘Lodgepole Pine’ and there was a tie for third between Bollington artist Ruth Smith’s and her watercolour ‘Brown Hare Watching’ and Macclesfield artist Helen Wright’s ceramic sculpture ‘I Have a Coat the Same Colour as My Dog’.
Other prizes announced before the start of the exhibition went to Steven Bewsher and Ralph McGaul.
Marilyn, who was born in Manchester in 1948, only took up painting in 2004. Following her retirement in 2010 she has concentrated full time on her art. She divides her time between her home in Deganwy, North Wales, and her studio in Stockport.
She said: “Painting with palette knives gives my work the colour and texture I want and injects a contemporary edge to some traditional subjects.”
A spokesman for the exhibition organisers said: “Marilyn’s work proved particularly popular with visitors to the Macclesfield Open, with a second painting also receiving numerous votes.”
The Macclesfield Open Art exhibition was launched in 2013 to showcase emerging local talent. It aimed to give all kinds of artists the chance to show their work whether they are young, old, amateur or professional.
The inspiration for the exhibition came from the Barnaby Art Trail, which showcases work in venues around the town throughout the summer festival. The event runs between November and January.