Artist Commissions

The Song of Rockfield by Tiffany Murray, Monmouthshire

Tiffany Murray is a Writer, she was born in South West Sussex and grew up in Wales. Tiffany’s memoir, 'My Family and Other Rock Stars'  is published by Fleet. Her novels  'Diamond Star Halo',  'Happy Accidents'  and  'Sugar Hall', have variously been shortlisted for the Wodehouse Bollinger Prize and received the Roger Deakin Award for nature writing. Tiffany has been a Hay Festival Fiction Fellow, a Fulbright scholar, and a Senior Lecturer. Her series, ‘Hulda’s Café’ is available on BBC Sounds. 

Patricia Statham Maginness, Monmouthshire

Patricia is a Northern Irish artist based in South Wales, who creates textured paintings in an earthy, almost monochrome palette. She works with encaustic wax, oils, iron gall ink and natural pigments.

Her work centers on connection with our homeland and the natural world, language and Celtic mythology.

She studied at Glasgow School of Art, University of Ulster and University of Brighton, earning a Post-Graduate Certificate in Secondary Education. Her years of teaching inspired her to create educational resources exploring ancient techniques, which links directly with her studio practice.

She has exhibited widely across the UK in Belfast, London, Essex and Cric Oriel in Crickhowell, where she is a regular exhibitor.

Mike Erskine, Monmouthshire

Mike is a filmmaker and digital media creator based in Usk, Monmouthshire. His journey into filmmaking began over 10 years ago when he became frustrated by the lack of attention on environmental issues. He could see lots of people and projects across Wales responding to social and environmental challenges and wanted to use film to share their stories. 

Since then he's been continually exploring themes around people and place, and the connections between the social, economic and natural worlds we live in. The films he likes to create are a mix of documentary and experimental; looking at things from a fresh angle, getting into details and working with communities to co-produce his films. Giving a voice to those not often heard is something he's always thinking about in his approach. 

Gemma Williams, Monmouthshire

Gemma is a doctor from South Wales, currently working in the Aneurin Bevan University Health Board at the Early Intervention Service for Psychosis. Whilst not formally trained as an artist, Gemma has engaged in various different disciplines of art over many years. She particularly enjoys sculpture and has made several different sculptures mostly using wire framework and papier mache. Gemma has previously been involved with Superdragons II in Newport and designed two dragons “Penny Pendraig” and “Firestarter”.  

Beth Wilks, Newport

Beth Wilks is a teacher and visual artist who works mainly through the medium of papercutting. She enjoys this technique in particular as the work is intricate and detailed which contrasts with the naïve and simplistic appearance of papercuts. She also finds it very satisfying, and sometimes challenging to produce a piece of work where all elements are joined in a continuous line. Being somewhat of a luddite, her work is created the old fashioned way, using a scalpel. Beth enjoys playing with elements of art which are juxtaposed, such as creating something mundane in a delicate or surprising way, and she also likes to include elements of humour in her work. Beth is inspired by the variety of fragments which come together to make us who we are such as places, words, music and people of significance, combined with a good dollop of nostalgia and a hint of the ridiculous. Her work often features popular culture, and being a proud Newportian, specifically Newport culture, which is a breed all of its own! 

Connor Allen, Newport

Connor is the former Children’s Laureate of Wales and associate artist of The Riverfront in Newport. He’s a multidisciplinary artist who graduated from Trinity Saint David as an Actor in 2013 and has worked extensively since then with companies such as Taking Flight Theatre, Sherman Theatre, Manchester Royal Exchange, National Theatre Wales and many more. He wrote and performed in his acclaimed debut show 'The Making of a Monster' at the Wales Millennium Centre in 2022 (playtext published by Aurora Metro Books).

Kristian Dent, Newport

Kristian Dent is a proud working-class Valley Boy and a playful Illustrative Artist. Through his work, he loves to provoke a curiosity with humour and deliberately attempts to capture the attention of all ages. He enjoys creating profound messages with a fun and approachable tale or sentiment to discover. His weapons of choice are mostly a quill, brushes, inks and his imagination. 

Olivia Coles, Newport

Olivia is an artist proudly born, raised, and still based in Newport, Wales and graduated with a BA (Hons) in Illustration from Cardiff Metropolitan University. Since graduating in 2016, Olivia has been steadily growing their career as a freelance illustrator, working with a range of commercial and personal clients. Alongside client work, they actively maintain a personal art practice which explores and celebrates their identity, interests, and surrounding communities. Olivia creates playful illustrations that exhibit queer joy and resilience and their current work provides positive representations for trans experiences. They primarily use colouring pencils to complete pieces and like to make work  that celebrates the Queer experience, including their own, whilst also highlighting the continued need for progress in LGBTQ+ rights and visibility. Olivia’s illustrations have a playful, uplifting style and are dedicated to representing marginalised and Global Majority communities. As an artist local to Newport, they strive to create work which conveys the diversity and creative spirit of Newport and wider Wales. 

Bridie Doyle-Roberts, Rhondda Cynon Taf 

Bridie is a multi-discipline artist based in Pontypridd. She founded a circus, dance and outdoor arts charity called 'Citrus Arts' in 2008 and has been acting as Co-Director for the past 15 years. In this role she has created touring theatre, festival and site specific productions and held tenures with Green Man festival, London Youth Circus and Circomedia. She has also worked on collaborative projects with Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru, Ballet Cymru and Marc Rees and delivered education and community development work with the Lead Creative Schools project, Arts Active and Bath Spa University.  

Jack Skivens, Rhondda Cynon Taf 

Jack is an illustrator who works in water colour, inks and pencils and occasionally charcoal. He is inspired by the world around him and loves to find hidden stories in everyday things, responding to his surroundings. He loves to tell stories with his illustrations for all to enjoy and tries to make them appeal to all ages. He likes to explore approaches to illustrations and is passionate about finding interesting ways to tell stories though illustration. He works from his home studio in Pontypridd and loves to include a forest walk in his morning routine. 

Kyle Stead, Rhondda Cynon Taf 

Kyle Stead (he/him) is a neurodivergent benefit class multidisciplinary artist born in the Rhondda Valley, South Wales. His practices include but are not limited to performing, theatre making, creative producing, media production and facilitating. He has a high interest in taking real life experiences to create work that offers audiences a raw, gritty and authentic insight into the world that is being created. Kyle is passionate about creating working environments that are trauma informed. This is important in order to boldly explore and be brave with creative choices. He wants to fight the underrepresentation of artists from low socio-economic backgrounds, while also looking at improving working conditions for neurodivergent individuals. As a school dropout, Kyle is passionate about alternative education and using the creative industry as a space for discovery, experimentation and celebration. Kyle uses spoken word poetry as a form of expression, often fusing his word with beatboxing. As someone who has struggled with his mental health and the ability to control his anger, he has found comfort in using the artform of spoken word poetry as his release. Kyle was a recipient of the Weston Jerwood Creative Bursary 2020-2022. 

Sylvia and Jonathan, Rhondda Cynon Taf 

Over the past two decades, composers and sound-designers Sylvia Strand and Jonathan Gregory have scored and crafted sound-design for numerous award-winning TV-series, films, drama-shorts and documentaries, which have been broadcast worldwide. Passionate about storytelling through sound and music, their work has achieved over a million streams online and they are often commissioned to provide original songs for opening titles end credits of films. In 2022 they had their first premier at the palais de Festival in Cannes for the award winning short - ‘The Last Union’.