Start planning now for the Ilkley Art Trail, when you can make memorable visits to see creativity in action... get inspired, get out there!

AFTER a gap of a year, Ilkley Art Trail is back.

For 5 days from October 7 to 11, 30 venues will open their doors to the public to meet and talk to, look at and possibly buy art from some 46 highly gifted regional artists. All the venues are free to enter.

We will feature several of these artists a week to give a taster of what is to come in October.

JULIET AND JAMIE GUTCH

Collaboration lies at the heart of the art practise of Juliet and Jamie Gutch, and balance and harmony are key concepts in their work.

Using a process involving various stages (starting with a number of drawings), the artists bend and shape wood to create a variety of forms they then compose into mobiles. The different elements of each mobile are suspended in perfect balance, moving past each other but never touching. The lightness of the wood ensures an almost constant movement that in turn creates a myriad of unforeseeable configurations and relationships between the elements.

Often exhibited on a smaller scale (at jaggedart ib Marylebone High Street, London, at the London Art Fair and Collect at the Saatchi Gallery), the artists also work on commission, whereby their smaller scale maquettes are scaled up and fabricated into metal.

Recent commissions involve large-scale pieces for John Lewis (Stratford, London) and the new Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital. Current work involves an exploration into colour and a new series inspired by Ilkley Moor.

Visit julietandjamiegutch.com for more details and artist information.

MIKE SMITH

Mike is a printmaker focussing his work mostly through the medium of lino block printing.

Originally from Liverpool, he lived in Leeds for many years and recently moved to Addingham. Mike trained at Liverpool and Newport Colleges of Art as a graphic designer.

A member of the West Yorkshire Print Workshop, Mike saod: "My work is always developed from my own drawn or photographic observations.

"Although not exclusively so, I use a ‘reduction’ process that has employed up to 15 different colour printing stages, but only one printing block.

"Lino printing has a particular fascination for me. I enjoy the 'primitive immediacy’ of the process that, in essence, is little changed from the earliest forms of printmaking. There is also the intellectual exercise of manipulating the image appropriately for the medium.”

Mike is also excited by the serendipitous nature of the process; no matter the extent of planning, the process itself will not be denied its own massive contribution to the final outcome through unexpected textures, strength or delicacy of line, tone or colour balance.

He added: "My work in 2015 will follow two quite different themes. The first of these being birds that appear with my own garden. My second theme is an exploration of our structural heritage – civic, industrial and domestic."

Mike’s work is on view and sale in a number of galleries in the Leeds and Yorkshire area. His portfolio can be viewed at his mikesmithprints.co.uk website.