Art and Leather

Skin brings together partners Rosie and Red with works linked by a common theme to Skin, Functional works in leather, will sit alongside paintings, prints and ceramics, that depict figurative works challenging perceptions of how we view men and women.

Based in North Devon, Rosie and Red Art and Leather have embarked on an exciting new venture with a shared creative energy, having taken on a gallery from where they exhibit their work, run courses, offer life drawing and workshops. Now for the first time they are touring their latest show to Artizan and we are excited to be welcoming them to the gallery for 3 weeks

Reds Raw Taw Tan – Adam Morrigan, Leather has been around for almost as long as our species, if not as a refined material, then as a handy bit of sturdy stuff to tie up a flint to a stick or a material to use as a shelter. Rawhide is extremely tough. Making leather and making works from leather is a precise, highly skilled craft, currently on the critically endangered list of crafts in the UK. The process, a tactile experience which lends itself to an emotional connection with the origin of the material and the finished piece. Red doesn’t use industrial methods, believing them to be uniform, alienating, monotonous, boring and if not done with a sublime degree of integrity, incredibly environmentally damaging. Sheepskin rugs, parchment, rawhide, deer leather, fish leather - shagreen - a bag, belt, key fob, or commission, a furried cow skin … utilise and invest. Beautiful, functional artisan leather goods - commissions welcome.

'Skin is a borrowing from Old Norse skinn 'animal hide, fur', ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European root *sek-, meaning "to cut”; probably a reference to the fact that in those times animal hide was commonly cut off to be used as garment - rather than the more usual contemporary practice of sending it to landfill or incineration. '

Rosie’s Marigold Men and Siren’s - Nudes - the skin we’re in: the human form is amazing and should be celebrated – life drawing is a great process: observation and focused working. Small edition prints, the plate is generally made directly from life, on recycled mount board - waste from picture framers. Sirens: depict women as thinkers, strong, singular entities not a mother or queen or sex object, able to indulge and be guilty of sloth or envy, and still maintain feminine beauty – sirens. The depiction of women in art has been a preoccupation through a degree in Archaeology: the goddess figures of fertility, the possibility of matriarchal societies in the Neolithic and the dominance of home maker, gatherer roles for women. Experiencing depictions of women in Degas delicate dancers and burlesque bathers, Rodin’s fallen in the gates of hell and sexualised drawings of women, Henry Moore’s gigantic queens and powerful mothers cradling infants reinforce the same depictions investigated in Archaeology. Rosie is increasingly interested in depicting less well-known women, historical characters in a different light, the juxtaposition of the beauty of the nude with the femme-fatale or warrior woman. Marigold Men (Marigolds are luridly coloured rubber gloves) an ongoing series of prints, the male nude wearing rubber gloves, comic and concerned with the depiction of men in advertising using cleaning products alongside the male names given to cleaning products / vacuum cleaners - often using classic poses from art history. Even though the realm of the domestic is still predominantly female – wouldn’t we all like a Marigold Man? This is a small attempt to redress the lack of domestic male figures depicted in art, not just king, leader, soldier or nobleman but man who also cleans the toilet. Rosie runs a monthly life drawing day, Rosie occasionally working in ceramics - to produce one off figurative - nude sculptures in high fired stoneware.

Rosie sold her first paintings when she was 15 years old; she has been making and selling her artwork for over three decades. She trained as an Archaeological site and finds illustrator as part of a degree in Archaeology and Sociology. She then went on to train as a teacher in secondary Art and Design, University of Plymouth, in the late 1990s. Rosie has taught in many educational environments and continues to teach from her studio Rosie and Red Art and Leather, she runs a monthly life drawing day and various Art workshops. Rosie exhibits locally, nationally and internationally with a number of independent gallerists: she has successfully shown work in Amsterdam, the Wells Art Contemporary, The ING Discerning Eye - Mall Galleries, the International Original Print Exhibition - Bankside London 2023 and has representation at the Venice Biennial 2024. She lives and works in Bideford in North Devon and has a passion for gardening and sea swimming - and is delightfully dyslexic!

‘By the skin of our teeth, we got a new Arts Business up and running, a year ago - Look, enjoy, learn and get those frogskins out to keep us in the buff, don't be a skin-flint: treat yourself to something from SKIN, Thanks Artizan Gallery for hosting us!’