An exhibition of work by first year HND Fine Art students and staff at Calderdale College opens to the public this week. ‘Another One Out of the Hat’, incorporating paintings and three-dimensional textiles, will be showing at Gallery One in the College’s new Creative & Conservation Skills Centre, funded by Action Halifax, between 9am and 4pm on weekdays until Friday 1 April. Entry is free.

Ruth Beazley, 62 and from Mill Bank, is among the ten artists exhibiting. Mrs Beazley had a forty-year career in education and social services in Scotland and Calderdale before pursuing her love of art at Calderdale College with a Life Drawing course, followed by Computing in Art & Design then the Art Access to Higher Education course last year.

“Art has been a lifelong interest and I was a holiday painter and photographer all my life”, she says. “Now I’m able to combine all these things and develop new ideas. I’m in my element; I wish I’d done it forty years ago. The idea for ‘Wishing Tree’ came from a tree that I’m very fond of in Argyll. So many pennies had been pushed into it by passers-by that it fell down last year. The weight of all those wishes had caused it to fall.”

Gareth Brown from Sowerby Bridge, 26, produces abstracts which are inspired by his own poetry. “I try to portray the way that I’m feeling when I’m painting”, he says. “I’m enjoying this tremendously. You’re not tied down to themes and can express your own self”.