MORE than 1,000 artists are brushing up their skills for this year’s Oxfordshire Artweeks Festival.

The month-long event, starting Saturday, May 5, will feature artists from across the county, displaying their work in a wide variety of different venues.

The artists and designer-makers, including 160 who are first-timers for 2018, are preparing for the 36th annual festival, which runs until Monday, May 28.

Among those taking part will be Oxford-based Elaine Kazimierczuk, who earlier this year held a special exhibition at Magdalen Road Studios in East Oxford.

After growing up in Mansfield she began painting full-time three years ago.

She said: “It’s just wonderful to call myself an artist - I get up in the morning and painting is exactly what I want to do!”

The artist added that the East Oxford community where she is based has been a ‘real source of support and encouragement’.

Artweeks director Esther Lafferty said Ms Kazimierczuk’s large abstracted paintings of woodlands and hedgerows burst with colour and flair,

She added: “They capture the chaotic array of vegetation in a landscape, the intricate assembly of wild beauty, deep shadows and the play of light, and they are very evocative – you can almost smell the vegetation and hear the gentle silence of a quiet clearing.”

  • There will be more than 460 exhibitions and events pop-up across the county, and tens of thousands of unique pieces of art and design will be on show.

  • North and West Oxfordshire is the focus from May 5 to May 13, Oxford City from May 12 to May 20 and South Oxfordshire from May 19 to May 28.

Although the majority of venues within each Artweeks region open only during their regional dates, some artists will exhibit for a longer period of time.

Ms Lafferty said: “You can see a potter in action in a Thames-side garden, explore hidden artists’ studios in the heart of Oxford or take an artist trail in the village where Downton Abbey was filmed.”

She added that a ‘vibrant palette’ of local artists would be opening their studios, presenting friendly exhibitions and giving demonstrations in interesting venues in villages and towns, from Bloxham to Blewbury, along the Ridgeway and the Windrush, in Oxford colleges, historic barns, secret gardens and a manor house that was home to kings.

She added: “Local art enthusiasts and visitors will be invited in, for free, to enjoy paintings, porcelain and pottery, fine art photography and sunlit stained glass. “From local landscapes to contemporary design with a difference, hand-made boats, and gargoyles sculpted in stone, there will be plenty to delight and intrigue, and all created in and around Oxfordshire.”

The festival is backed by Oxford Art Society, The Oxfordshire Craft Guild and West Ox Arts.

For more information visit artweeks.org