Guy Taplin -

“Our beginnings never know our ends” could apply to the Taplin show – I’m in my 32nd year of making birds and still surprise myself on a regular basis. Sam has come along in leaps and bounds, Nancy is astonishing, and Robina’s change of direction into ceramics has delighted and surprised us all. We all pretty much work in sheds and borrow each other’s stuff and consult one another. Neither Robina or I have consciously influenced Sam or Nancy, they’ve gone their own way, and we are proud of them.

Nearly all the bases in my work in the show have been found on the deserted islands of Portugal, except the base the four sleeping plover rest on. There is, or was, a fish farm on the edge of the salt marsh at Pinheiro. A hole in the fence that clammers were using as a short cut to the sea signalled to me the fact that the fish farm had gone tits-up. In the distance I could see two blue cubes, which turned put to be deserted guard dog kennels with the dogs’ names on. Family panic set in at the thought of incarceration, but I managed to get this base. I will get the rest next time.

Someone said that all a good wine has to do is be red and I find this imbibed before a long beach-comb in the hot sun against a blue sea and sky sharpens the eye. I’ll raise a glass to you all next time… Good luck!

Guy

Nancy Rose Taplin -

As upbringings go, my brother’s and mine could be seen as something of an inadvertent vocational training camp. Our parents’ daily commute was, and still is, to two artists’ sheds in the garden, the ebbs and flows of the art world have long been standard fare for dinnertime conversation, whilst at times the whole family has felt the looming threat of displacement by our father’s ever-increasing collection of objects spanning the gap between tribal masks and Barbie dolls.

Despite this, my creative journey has so far been a winding one, with forays into art history, in which I have an MA, and a discovered passion for textile design, which I took as my second degree, graduating last year. Highlights so far include being out-dressed by Grayson Perry when he awarded me the Texprint Interior Fashion Prize, and accompanying my work to exhibitions in London, Goa, Paris and Hong Kong. My diverse training is reflected in my work, which umbrellas fine art, fashion and textiles for interiors, and is inspired by subjects as disparate as the First World War and the estuary at the bottom of my road.

Having inherited my father’s hoarding instincts, I collect paper ephemera, and find the scuffed patina of used stationary an ideal surface on which to paint and draw. My recent work captures my encounters with birds and their habitats – from the young blackbird I often see drinking from the copper tub in the garden, to the pied kingfishers that flitted around Lake Victoria during a recent visit to Kampala – merging the hidden histories of old books and fabric with the excitement I find in the natural world.

Nancy

Sam Taplin -

As a young man of nineteen, after a long time of fishing freshwater rivers and the sea I turned my attention to making wooden fish in my dad’s workshop. I wanted to make fish such as pike and perch because of the pleasure they had given me whilst trying desperately to catch them with my dad. Wood lent a certain quality to my work, and I still work in wood now. Inspired, I started to make up various patterns that help make the fish more like painted canvasses, finding pleasure in painting them with both made up and realistic patterns. My first show was in Dedham in Suffolk, made possible by a family friend, Graham Wilson. With the support of my family I have continued to make fish to this day, and I’m now twenty-seven.

My work is made using old scaffolding planks bought from the building trade – they’re perfect, and I use any paint I can get. The finishing is inspired by looking at weathered, sea-bitten wood, that and all sorts of other influences such as catalogues of the world, boats with peeling paint and the colours of buildings in foreign countries. I also get ideas out of fish books, as well as from fish decoys, primitive art, and simple colours and combinations.

Sam

Robina Jack -

Having spent decades working with noxious chemicals in a tumbledown bike shed at the foot of the garden creating the stained glass panels for which I am better known, I’ve recently transferred my love of surface pattern to ceramics and moved to the rather more high spec pottery I’ve had built one shed along.

The move and the change of media have been transforming. My work is still driven by pattern and colour and still feels incomplete without a patterned border, but I am no longer constrained by glass’s limitations - clay is endlessly malleable. Using my own moulds, I make earthenware pots which I decorate in coloured slips and transparent glazes with animals, plants and coastal motifs.

Go to 'Current' page