All Artists
Danny Touw
Danny is inspired by the winter landscapes in the Swiss and French Alps. He works with and combines different media such as acrylics on canvas, aquarelle and ink on paper, and fully digital paintings.
Danny grew up in the Netherlands where he painted, photographed and studied technology. After 30 years working and living around the world
he and his wife now call the Swiss Alps and the Mediterranean island of Crete home. Many of the inspiration for his paintings start from these wonderful and different places.
He draws inspiration from his everyday environment with a focus on composition through shapes, tonal values and colours. His inspiration starts from the impressionists, and continues all the way to many contemporary artists.
He hasn’t yet concluded on his own style, and is unlikely to ever will. He likes to try out new styles also by using different media. Some of his works converge as we have curated here.
For the Chalet Art Store we’ve selected his digitally painted works all inspired by the winter landscapes of the Swiss and French Alps, printed beautifully on special art paper.
Adrianna Muffat Jeandet Wojcik
Adrianna Muffat Jeandet Wojcik is a visual artist, born in 1975, in Poland. She moved to France with her parents in 1980. In 1999, she graduated as a psychologist from the University of Grenoble. At the same time, she followed the fine arts courses in Grenoble, Annecy and Le Genevois; and attended the studios of several artists in Switzerland and France.
She has lived in front of Mont Blanc for over 20 years and her workshop is located in Megève. She considers the mountain to be part of her identity and it is one of her main sources of inspiration. She contemplates Mount Blanc from her studio window; the mountain fascinates her. A mountain par excellence, a forbidden place, a promise or a refuge, Mont Blanc represents strong symbolism which Adrianna portrays through her works.
“My representation of the landscape stems from my photographic shots. It is in this back and forth between my unconscious, my inner visions, my photographs and my memories of glimpsed landscapes that I draw my inspiration. I express through painting my emotions and feelings in front of the panorama that surrounds me, but I also wonder about the future of the mountain and its evolution.”
The landscape can sometimes become a pretext. This is an entry to cover other topics. The landscape by definition always depends on an observer, therefore a point of view.
"All of Adrianna Wojcik Muffat Jeandet's images attempt, in their hybridization of the figurative and the abstract, the impressive and the expressive, to capture a thought at its unconscious source. "
Jean Paul Gavard Perret. Poet, critic and lecturer.
“The element which makes it its singular quality is probably located around the interstice located between the appearance / disappearance, the banal / extraordinary, the trivial / sublimated, an indeterminate and invisible zone that the artist seeks to bring out and which provokes in the viewer a form of unstable balance, of indecision about what he thinks he sees and feels”.
Frédéric Elkaïm - Art advisor, coordinator for the Cercle Menus Plaisirs in Geneva.
Martin Stranka
Martin Stranka, a native of the Czech Republic who lives in Prague, is a self-taught professional photographer, born on April 13 1984. Martin was a bored student plodding through courses in business school when the unexpected death of a close friend led him to pursue photography as a form of therapy.
During the last years he has won over 80 major international photography awards from different competitions, including Sony World Photography Awards, Professional Photographer of the Year, Nikon International Photo Contest, Prix de la Photographie Paris and International Photography Awards eleven times in a row. His solo and group exhibitions have been seen from South and North America, through Europe, all the way to Asia. His photographs have been exhibited in places such as New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Basel, Tokyo, Milan, London, Miami, Paris, Prague, Hong Kong, Kiev and many more. Martin's work was presented in prestigious galleries such as Getty Images Gallery, Saatchi Gallery, THINK+feel Contemporary Art Gallery and SNAP! Orlando. His work stood proudly alongside the likes of Andy Warhol, Annie Leibovitz, Banksy, Damien Hirst, Helmut Newton and Erwin Olaf. Martin was introduced and exposed at SCOPE, one of the largest and most global emerging art fair in the world running during Art Basel week, held annually in New York City, Miami, and Basel.
Martin's dreamy, transportive photography has been commissioned by cultural institutions such as the National Theatre in Prague and the Czech National Ballet. Dozens of his images have also been used by New York publishers for the covers of mysteries and thrillers — genres he believes his work is perfectly suited to. He has created book covers for the biggest New York publishers, such as Harper Collins Publishers, Sterling Publishing and Penguin. In addition, he has collaborated with other book publishers, music publishers and artists around the world. Work of Martin Stranka was featured in interviews for Adobe, Disney, The Guardian, The Sun, The Daily Telegraph and many more."
Louise McNaught
Louise McNaught completed her Fine Art Degree BSc (Hons) in 2012 at the University of Greenwich, and she has continued to work as a professional artist ever since, with international representation. She also became a published Author in 2018. Her artwork has also been featured in art fairs in Milan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Stockholm, Brussels and all over the UK.
Louise‘s creations feature nature and animals, where the animals are God-like, sublime and ethereal in their presence and depiction. McNaught's work is motivated by emotive and spiritual experiences which has manifested in a mixed-media approach. Her soft style suggests a delicate relationship between nature and ourselves, making a clear point about man's destruction of nature - which flutters jewel-like in the balance. When focusing on endangered species the imagery often takes on a duality of not only what is happening to the animal itself, but also reflects how we feel psychologically about the effect the human race is having on these species.
Her focus on endangered species has manifested in a book called 'Survival', which Louise created with worldwide publishers Big Picture Press in September 2018. The idea came from the Solo Show Louise was doing with George Thornton Gallery in 2016, also called 'Survival'. The book shows 20 endangered animals painted by McNaught, with facts about the animals plight and conservation efforts. 'Survival' is sponsored by the well-known charity Tusk.org with proceeds of the book going toward helping their cause.
Thomas Crauwels
A photographer passionate about the high summits of the Swiss and French Alps, Thomas specialises, since 2010, in the creation of black and white mountain images.
Through his excursions and exhibitions, he has become one of the major artists of the contemporary alpine world.
Through his works, he conveys his fascination for the world of mineral and ice that is the high mountains.
The Alps, and the mountains in general, have the ability to change face almost every moment, sometimes generous, sometimes threatening, but always majestic and he wishes to highlight mountain photography in all its artistic aspects.
Each of his ascents to these incredible summits is designed to take a very specific shot, taken at the right time, with the right light, the right framing and the right settings. Not at all attached to the figurative aspect, he enhances their allure with particular atmospheres, textures and light on their magical summits to reveal the beauty of the Alps to the general public.
Through the meeting of mineral and sky, also taking into account the meteorological factor, his pictures allow him to express deep emotions, the ones that inhabit him when he contemplates these summits.
Today, his black and white photos of the Alps are widely recognized for their artistic aspect and for the emotions they emanate. But beyond the artistic and aesthetic aspect of his mountain photos, he feels invested in a mission for the planet. The degradation of our mountains and glaciers pushes him to use his artistic vision to follow the evolution of the Alps and to freeze these magical moments that our generation will still have the chance to admire. In this way, we will be able to pass on part of this heritage to future generations through unique photos.
Taking over from the alpinist painters and photographers of the 18th and 19th centuries, he continues to immortalize the memories of the Alps, which are constantly evolving.
Gio Fleming
Gio’s first love is being among inspirational scenery taking emotive photographs of landscapes. Whenever possible she loves to travel to remote and rugged places with her camera.
A consequence of growing up in mountainous areas is a sensitivity to the subtle cycles and seasonal changes of the landscape. The trees, the rivers, the fields, the snow cover, and the mountains, which show different aspects of themselves from one hour, one day, one season, to the next.
Her challenge is to capture these subtle mood changes in ways that will induce those who see her photographs, to not only hang them in their homes, but to want to preserve and cherish these places also.
Gio’s approach is not to click and move on, not to simply reproduce what is in front of her, but to use her life experience to be patient, to find the right aspect, to wait for the best light, and to instil feeling and emotion into the images to fully convey the beauty, and the extremes of the drama which is out there in these wild settings if we are willing to look for it.
The world’s wild places - mountains, glaciers, polar ice – are under increasing pressure, both from climate change and the relentless intrusion of human activities.
One way to inspire people to value and make an effort to preserve these areas is by sharing images of them. These images need to convey not only the beauty but the fragility of such environments.
Gio has been fortunate to spend much of her life in or close to such places. She grew up in the Italian ski resort of Bardonecchia, and she now lives in Les Gets, in the French Alps. When she is not photographing the landscape she capturing beautiful photographs of interiors and food.
Anna Marrow
Anna has mastered the art of visual storytelling, covering a breadth of styles from Pop Art, Fantasy Art to Street Art. Her paintings and illustrations offer surprising and sometimes humorous images by combining mundane objects and environments with glamorous creatures and characters. She likes to draw on her childhood for inspiration and features objects from the seventies such as televisions, radios and cars to set the image in a certain place in time.
Anna loves to combine photographic, digital and autographic marks and make them all part of the same piece. She starts her work by drawing a building, an environment or an object, then she adds unlikely characters. She loves the romance and innocence of old films and musicals and often adds the characters she’s inspired by into weird and wonderful settings.
Anna has been selected for six edits of the The Other Art Fair, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and the 2020 London edition. She has had work purchased for the ‘Central Saint Martin’s contemporary collection’ and she has been selected for the Woolwich contemporary print fair 2018, 2019 and 2020. Last year she was selected for the Boodle Hatfield’ prize.
Nadia Attura
Nadia creates photographed details made on location which are then layered to form a tableaux of collected complex scenes within a scene, together they convey a sense of place and time. Often engaging with themes of idealism and paradise, the bright images become multifaceted tableaux, combining unexpected objects, settings and colours to construct uncanny depictions of desirable destinations.
The original photographs disappear from documentary single imagery toward a more painterly poetic interpreted view of the world. She works with paint, inks and chalk which she adds to the digital and analogue compositions to create final limited edition artworks.
Nadia's artwork exhibited at The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 2019 and 2016. In 2017 she was one of five finalists in the VAO. Her work is featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, Aesthetica Magazine, Enki Magazine and Ideal Home. She exhibits regularly Internationally with The Other Art Fair and The Affordable Art Fair.
Nadia graduated from The University of Arts London in 1999 with a Postgraduate in Photojournalism. She lives in London, United Kingdom.
Marion McConaghie
Marion McConaghie is an artist who creates a diverse range of images including abstracts, animals and portraits. She loves texture in her work and includes this mostly in her abstracts which are inspired by the sea and landscape, some of these are drawn from inspiration from growing up on the Causeway Coast in Northern Ireland.
Her work is found in all corners of the world with collectors of her work growing.
Marion has lived in Lewes for many years, originally from Northern Ireland she came to study art as a teenager in the late 1980’s and eventually gaining a First class honours degree in Fine Art Painting at Brighton University.
Eliza Southwood
Eliza Southwood practiced as an architect before deciding to take up a career as an artist and illustrator a decade ago, although she has consistently drawn and painted throughout her life. Her first illustration commission was a Spanish children’s book, when she was aged 13.
From the age of ten she spent her childhood in a remote part of Spain, where she grew up drawing and painting scenes of local life in the mountains. She attended the local Spanish primary and secondary schools, later travelling to the UK for further studies. A year in Italy followed, where she ended up working with Arab race horses for a year, and learnt to speak Italian fluently in addition to Spanish.
At University her creative streak was channelled into architectural design, and she graduated from the Glasgow School of Art with a degree in Architecture, later finishing her postgraduate architectural studies in London. She spent several years working as a designer for various architectural practices such as Eric Parry Architects and Arup Associates. However, having realised that she enjoyed carrying out the ‘artist’s impression’ part of her job more than any other, she finally decided to give up architectural practice in order to work full time on her own art projects.
Eliza’s architectural training fostered a technical eye for drawing and use of colour. Her speciality is silk screen printing, but she also works in mixed media, watercolour and acrylic. She is known particularly for her cycling themed artwork, but also produces work on a wide range of subjects such as cityscapes, dogs, sports and people.She exhibits widely across the UK and abroad and is a regular participant in the Affordable Art Fairs.
Selected clients include Rapha, Bloomsbury Publishing, Laurence King Publishing, Magma, the V&A Museum, Brompton Bicycles, Sustrans, the London Cycling Campaign, Bourne and Hollingsworth and Cono Sur Wines. She also regularly takes on artwork commissions for private clients.
Steven Shaw
Shaw has been a full time artist since 2003 when he graduated from University of Central England with a Fine Art degree. Shaw is fascinated by nature and his main subject of interest is animals. He is brilliant at capturing their individual personality and often does so in a humorous way.
He uses a variety of mediums to express their character in his work. When he works with oils it brings a strong physical presence to his subject and when using water colours he creates a much softer expressive feeling through his work. Sometimes he chooses to paint in a controlled, detailed manner, other times he prefers a looser, more expressive style meaning he can turn his hand to many different styles of painting from realism to impressionism and expressionism.
Exhibitions:
Big Spring Show. 2019.
20th anniversary of gallery opening.
Serena Hall Gallery, Southwold, Suffolk.
' Art Tea ' Edgbaston boutique hotel, Birmingham, England. 2015.
' Art in the Courtyard ' Autumn 2015.
Solo Show. Hotel Du Vin, Birmingham, England.
The Affordable Art Fair, Battersea, London. Autumn 2013.
Lyndhurst Gallery Summer Show 2013.
New Forest, Hampshire.
The Affordable Art Fair, Battersea, London. Autumn 2012.
Chelsea Art Fair. Spring 2012.
The Edinburgh Art Fair. Autumn 2011.
The Affordable Art Fair, Battersea, London. Autumn 2011.
' Flora and Fauna ' group exhibition Autumn 2011.
Fisherton Mill Gallery, Salisbury.
Lyndhurst Gallery Summer Show. 2011.
New Forest, Hampshire.
Chelsea Art Fair. Spring 2011.
Kings Road, London.
The Affordable Art Fair, Battersea, London. Autumn 2010.
' Art at the Park ' May 2010.
Croxton Park, Thetford, Norfolk.
' Woburn Art Beat ' April 2010.
Woburn, Milton Keynes, England.
' Art by the Sea ' Spring 2010.
St. Edmonds Hall, Southwold, Suffolk.
The Affordable Art Fair, Battersea, London. Autumn 2009.
Solo Show. Summer 2009. Serena Hall Gallery.
Southwold, Suffolk.
Cambridge Art Fair. Summer 2009.
The Affordable Art Fair, Battersea, London. Autumn 2008.
The Affordable Art Fair, Battersea, London. Autumn 2007.
The Affordable Art Fair, Battersea, London. Autumn 2006.
The Affordable Art Fair, Battersea, London. Autumn 2005.
The Affordable Art Fair, Battersea, London. Autumn 2004.
Royal Birmingham Society of Artists Winter Show 2004.
The Affordable Art Fair, New York. Autumn 2004.
The Affordable Art Fair, Bristol, England. Spring 2004.
The Affordable Art Fair, Battersea, London. Autumn 2003.
' Eye Candy ' Group exhibition at the Surface Gallery in Nottingham, England.
Degree Show. Summer 2003.
Solihull college, England.
