Karen Purple and Fiona Hepburn use their art to explore the natural world, in very different and successfully complementary ways. Purple deconstructs the landscape to create abstract pieces that celebrate and explore the effect nature has on her and in the process she creates engaging gentle pictures in which atmosphere and colour preside. She works in the main in oils but she also uses raw pigments such as madder (red), woad (blue) and weld (yellow), natural materials with centuries’ old references.

In Drawing Blocks she incorporates plant pigments into beeswax, using these to create some definite, some blurred patterns on chunky little square boards covered in linen and treated with her own gesso. Some of the patterns square up like sequences of chromosomes, while others melt into the ether and each other.

Hepburn’s work on the other hand is strongly anatomical. She recreates extraordinary detailed pieces featuring fungi, lichen and marine and terrestrial plants, all of which are made from cut-worked paper.

The centrepiece of the exhibition is her Sea Lung. A large and wonderfully organic seaweed decorously descends from ceiling to floor, casting reflective shadows as it does. Created from a huge sheet of cartridge paper, Hepburn has excised it to reveal the beautiful structure of the ribs and veins of the plant. In Aspergillus Fumigatus Fungus I (above) as in other pieces she works in exquisite detail to create tiny components by screen printing her paper and then cutting out minute sections to mount on pins, thus creating a layered vibrant work.

Hepburn is holding a tempting ‘come and make’ session on the afternoon of July 3, where, under her tutelage, one can create one’s own screen print and cut work.

The exhibition is at HEMINGWAYART, Cassington, and open Thursday to Sunday 2-7pm continuing till July 3.