Barnaby Festival Community Art Trail 2023

The painting depicts the beauty of light and colour in an urban skyscape with an almost abstract feel to it.

Martyn Hulme

Leap of faith: No explanation, no context, dropping from dark into light with confidence that the landing will be safe.

Reflection – is about seizing the moment for quiet contemplation of the day before the new light of the night takes over.

Fresh New Start: As dawn breaks on a new day, the cold biting mist cleanses the land, freshening the air for the sun’s rays to burst onto new possibilities.

Jane Barker

Jean Westbrook, the creator of The BIG Cardigan (first Barnaby 2010), has worked on many community art projects in Macclesfield such as The 750Banner, Peter on Peter Street and The Congregation of Scarecrows. During Covid she studied comedy and made people laugh with her fun puppets on-line graphics. These were also a feature in the Barnaby Digital Parade in 2020. The puppet shown here, Chanice, has danced on the Fourth Plinth (2009) and starred in a stand-up routine at Glastonbury last year.

Jean Westbrook combines her own photographs and pencil drawings to produce digital images often based on the human condition.

I’m Márkó Benes, a printmaker and designer living in Macclesfield. I was born in 1978, on the other side of the Iron Curtain, in Hungary. I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in printmaking from the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in 2002. Not long after I moved to the UK, I found a thriving culture of storytelling, but also found these stories very different from the Eastern European ones. Since then, I’ve been gathering stories from all around the world and depicting them in prints and paintings. My painting is only vaguely recalling a Hungarian legend and an annual celebration called Busójárás, held by the people of Mohács at the end of the Carnival season (Farsang in Hungarian). The celebration features Busós (people wearing scary masks) and includes folk music, masquerading, parades, and dancing. According to the legend, the time when Ottomans ruled the territory, people from Mohács fled the town, and started living in the nearby swamps to avoid Ottoman troops. Following an old man’s advice, they carved scary masks for themselves, and waited for the right time to come. Some days later, on a stormy night, a masked knight arrived and led them back to Mohács. They were wearing their masks and making as much noise as possible. The Turks were so frightened, they ran away from the town before sunrise.

Retired with time for myself now and exploring the world in a new light. I am new to photography and just follow my instincts which are usually triggered by colour and nightscapes.

Sharon Heggs

Macclesfield Stripe Reimagined  

I am originally from Macc but I moved away to study fashion and textiles at university but always remained deeply passionate about Macc’s history of textiles and surface design. I am presenting a series of prints inspired by Macclesfield Stripe and the aesthetic of mid-century British seaside holidays. The prints pay homage to the tightly woven streets of terraced houses in central Macc where I grew up and live now.    ”

Amelia Beaumont-Dodd

Facebook Jennie Gaywood Artist

This amazing insect is a ‘Thick Legged Flower Beetle’ , an important pollinator and just one of the millions of fascinating invertebrates that thrive on Danes Moss and make it one of the richest wildlife hotspots in Cheshire. The Save Danes Moss campaign opposes a plan for 950 houses plus retail units on the northern-most expanse of Danes Moss.

This 136 acre site is called Danes Moss North and is a designated Local Wildlife Site. The soil here is deep peat – more than 5m deep in some places. Up to 220,000 tonnes of CO2 would be released from the peat if t Danes Mosshe development goes ahead. Rare and endangered wildlife breeds and thrives on Danes Moss North including Willow Tits, the UK’s fastest declining resident bird. The site used to be part of a 1,000 acre peat bog which has been damaged over the centuries and largely drained, given over to agriculture and urban development or buried under landfill waste. We believe that Danes Moss needs to be treated better than this. The campaign has produced a positive vision for the future of Danes Moss North. We propose that no urban development should take place on the site. Instead, much of the site should be re-wet and allowed to return to active bog. Existing wet woodlands should be preserved and possibly expanded. Access to the site must be preserved by boardwalks and other means so that people can continue to enjoy this magical place and beautiful creatures like the ‘Thick legged Flower Beetle’ can continue to thrive there, as they have for millennia.