Folklore exhibition celebrates winter warmth

Milly Jackson created three digital collages featuring folkloric heroines

Work by more than 20 artists celebrating winter is to go on display in Solihull from next month.

Winter Folk includes embroidery, paintings and collages of real-life and mythical figures by 21 artists from the UK, Denmark and Ukraine, according to organisers.

Artist Odette Campell said her abstract embroidery was inspired by photographs of winter sun reflecting on Birmingham architecture, adding that winter did not always mean darkness.

Exhibition curator Ruth Millington, from the Courtyard Gallery at The Core, said: I hope visitors will find a little bit of seasonal magic in this folklore-themed exhibition, which shows us that there's enchantment to be found in everyday life."

Snowy scenes were painted by Tanya Farrugia

Painter Maya Davis-Stokes said she was inspired by family photographs to tell a personal story of her parents meeting by chance in Copenhagen in Denmark, surrounded by the stories of Hans Christian Anderson.

"I wanted to express the warmth they found in the winter and how out of the bleak cold a family was forged," she said.

Milly Jackson has created three digital collages featuring folkloric heroines and reflecting "warmth and renewal".

"I have an inherited love of folk art," she said.

"My mother lovingly stitched hundreds of embroideries inspired by folk samplers rich with naïve patterns, charming distortions of scale, and human warmth.

"I'm drawn to the pure, often untrained artistry of folk makers: their bold silhouettes, flattened perspectives, and decorative storytelling."

The free exhibition opens on 12 December and runs until 10 January.

Ms Millington said it had been an honour to work with so many talented artists "who prove that there is great power in collective endeavours and that the gallery itself can become a warm space during winter".

The exhibition has handmade dolls, embroidery, paintings, collages, and other mixed-media works on display, organisers said