Member of the Month: Belinda Coyne
Belinda is an artist whose enamelling and metalwork reflect her layers of experience and accumulated memories of diverse landscapes.
Her approach to enamelling is expressive and intuitive, grounded in a craft-making tradition but defined by a contemporary approach to application methods, scale, and conceptually engaging with an environmental agenda. She explores notions of space and place using a visual framework of grids, maps, and geometric notation that quantifies space; statistical information layered within an emotional response.
She begins by applying hand-painted and wet-process sprayed enamel to copper and steel, panels and bowls. Utilising the properties of the metal to enable extensive reworking and physical intervention.
She incises, rubs, sgraffitos, and brushes back the initial layers, creating gestural marks that echo the landscape. After each kiln firing, she uses a wet stone polisher to abrade the enamel surface, which reveals not only surface marks but also those embedded within the piece.
Through the further interplay of opaque and transparent sieved enamels and her own enamel decals, she builds visual depth and complexity. Her work is defined by a continual rhythm of addition and subtraction, resulting in pieces that function as quiet dialogues between the landscape and the viewer, inviting them to explore the underlying narrative and agenda rooted within the work.
The British Society of Enamellers has a broad membership, encompassing levels of expertise from enamel students to professional level enamellers. Our aim is to promote the highest standards of contemporary design and workmanship in all aspects of this unique and exciting medium.
UK based, the BSOE has international connections and offers exhibition opportunities, bursaries, an online gallery, industry discounts, workshops and events for its members.
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