Playtime and horses focus of exhibitions

Work by two artists — Jackie Berridge and Lynne Lamb — has gone on display at the Millgate Museum, Newark.

The first, Playtime, in the Mezzanine Gallery and Stage Two Gallery, features work by Jackie, of Halloughton Road, Southwell.

Her paintings in oils and acrylics are very symbolic.

She said: “They relate to ambition and preconceptions about what people are and what they want others to see them as.

“They’re also about first impressions and the idea that you should never judge a book by its cover. Some people are strong but they hide behind a different face.”

She has exhibited locally, nationally, and internationally, from Leicester to London and Stockholm. Early next year she will take her work to Chicago.

Jackie said it had taken her nearly two years to put the current display together.

“People enjoy the colour, the energy and the light and then they can bring their own interpretations to the work,” she said. “Some paintings are based on nursery rhymes and others on playground politics.”

Her work will feature at the HMS Open Studios, tied into the British Art Show in Nottingham at the end of the year.

The second exhibition, in the Art Before Coffee Gallery, features contemporary paintings by Lynne, of The Green, Collingham.

The exhibition is entitled Man And Myth in which horses are the main inspiration.

Lynne said she was inspired to paint the pieces after a holiday to Ireland.

She said: “You see all those horses on their own in their fields. It was seeing those solitary horses that made me want show how they are situated in our mythology.

“My hope is that people can see behind the image, finding some of the meaning themselves and that even without reading this statement they will still understand what the work is about.”

After completing a Foundation Art course in Newark, Lynne graduated from De Montfort University, now the University of Lincoln, in 1998 with a BA Hons degree in Fine Art.

Her work is held in several private collections in Spain, Italy and Bahrain and she has a permanent exhibit at the Il Castello restaurant in Castlegate, Newark.

Working with acrylics and mixed media, the ten pieces in the current display took around a year to create.

Both exhibitions run until Sunday, June 20 — LB.