This week, Castle Park Arts Centre was awoken from its lockdown slumber by the arrival of four new exhibitions, including Trio: Three Seasons, Three Styles by Maggie Hilditch.

A bit about Maggie

Maggie is a Liverpool-based painter and art trainer, whose career spans many aspects of the creative world.

After working briefly as a fashion designer, she trained to become an art teacher, leading workshops in schools, churches, theatres, health facilities and retreat centres.

From 2008-10, she was artist-in-residence at Wotton Lawn Hospital in Gloucestershire, during which time she was awarded an NHS 'ROSCA' Unsung Hero award for services to mental health.

"This was following a period of serious mental illness," Maggie explains. "I live with Bipolar 2, a condition that affects a lot of creative people.

"Experiencing the complexity of mental ill-health made me want to produce art that brings hope to others and aids their recovery, just as the creative process has helped me."

Trio

"Trio is an exhibition of three styles reflecting three creative seasons," Maggie says.

"My style varies, dependent on where my mood is. Techniques and method change with the direction that I find my life going in."

"In the first season I was painting seascapes and landscapes. My aim was to explore the natural world - its depth of colour, movement, and texture."

In these paintings, Maggie was keen to explore the parallels between the natural seasons and our human life cycle, and how they manifest themselves in art.

"In the second period," she continues, "I began drawing flowers in pieces that are intentionally very sensory.

"The third series was created during the recent lockdown period.

"Like many of us, I felt restricted and confined, and found myself expressing my frustration through painting blocks in strong colours.

"My painting style is in the 'colourist' tradition, and colour is important to me."

As it moves from season to artistic season, Maggie's work undergoes a clear evolution.

In her seascape paintings, light and dark interact dynamically, creating the feeling of eddies, surges and flows, of an ocean that remains unsettled even when captured on canvas.

This sense of movement is stilled in Maggie's flowers, whose intricate folds and creases are marked with exacting detail, perfect in their wholeness.

Through this painstaking work, Maggie reflects how "each flower is uniquely different in its form and beauty."

"After completing the drawings," she adds, "I highlighted them with background colours, which were often those of the flowers themselves."

The third section of the Trio exhibition evokes a more abstract mood, the clear divisions between its square shapes suggesting separation, isolation.

"My abstract work involves layering both oil and acrylic paints, creating texture with an assortment of brushes and rollers," Maggie says.

In this way, she hopes to reflect the many layers of experience and feeling which make up our lives.

Creating work in lockdown

Although many of the works in Trio were produced before the Covid-19 pandemic began, the final chapter was born out of lockdown.

I wondered how this experience impacted Maggie in her work.

"It was important that I kept being creative during lockdown," she says, "as I needed to look after my mental health, which at times has not been well.

"Disciplining myself to start the day with stillness, followed by a session in my studio, helped me cope.

"This led to the 'boxed-in' theme which ran through my work for a few months, resulting in a collection of pieces, some of which is exhibited at Castle Park Arts Centre.

"I do hope people find time to view the exhibition online and enjoy the work as best they can. I am simply pleased to be exhibiting again!"

[I]While Castle Park is closed, you can follow the Trio exhibition on the Arts Centre's Facebook and Instagram pages, which will be updated frequently with pictures of the work on display.

You can also see more by clicking through the gallery at the top of this article.

If you would like to find out more about any of the pieces included in the exhibition, please email your request to both [email protected] and [email protected], or phone 01928 735832 to leave a message.

You can read more about Maggie's lovely work on her website.