ALASDAIR URQUHART

Born and educated in Scotland he went to Dundee College of Art in 1974 finishing his postgraduate studies in 1979. Alasdair won scholarships from the British Council to Budapest Fine Art Academy, and the Elizabeth Greenshield scholarship twice from Canada.
He has been exhibited at the Scottish Royal Watercolour Society, the Royal Watercolour Society, and the Royal Institute and also in numerous galleries in towns across England, Scotland and Wales. His work has also been exhibited and in private collections in Europe, America, Canada and Japan.
Alasdair received sponsorship from Rosenstiel’s Fine Art Publishers, London, a residency at Grizedale in Cumbria, and has had his paintings published by Rosenstiel’s, Medici and Parnassus.
He lives in the West Country, and many of his paintings depict richly detailed local scenes, and reflect his own deep interest in the lives of people living and working in the region. He believes that “Lives are not ordinary – all our lives and the way we live them and interact with our environment are important. I hold up a mirror to people and situations.”

JANE SIMANTS

After completing a Fine Art course at Falmouth College of Art, I specialised in Technical Illustration, working freelance from my home in beautiful St Ives, with an agent representing me in London. I then acquired the position of lecturer in Technical Illustration and Airbrush at the Cornish college where I had studied.
With the advent of computers, Technical Illustration was one of the first areas to be affected, but as I have always felt more at home holding a paintbrush or pencil, I searched for another field of Art where I would be able to use my skills and very quickly identified Medical Art to be an area where accuracy and detail are critical. There followed a period of training with the Medical Artists’ Education Trust, attending seminars at the Royal College of Surgeons.
Throughout my career in Art, I believe the most important area of discipline to be that of life drawing. It forms the basis to so much work and offers good instruction to the eye in recognising perspective, proportion and composition, therefore I have continued at each turn in my career to devote several hours a week to this particular study.