ArtWell Cafe

Inspired by Aboriginal art from Australia, we explored telling stories through dots and colour. Beautiful creations everyone. Next week we’re hoping to go 3d with wire sculptures.

Today we took inspiration for our paintings from Haiku poetry. The themes of the poems were all relating to the summer with beautiful results! They certainly put us more in the mood of summer than the weather.

Our groups are a source of great chat and support through the many challenges of mental health. If you’d like to find out more or come along to one of our groups, message us here or email me at [email protected]

Inspired by the new window in Selby Abbey, we thought we’d have a go at creating our own beautiful stained ‘glass’ creations. As always, great chat and support! See you next week.

Today at ArtWell we went big and worked at A2 size to encourage us all to be a bit freer with our charcoal and chalk with fabulous results!

Here they are…

With wonderful inspiration and skilled guidance from Nikki (https://www.facebook.com/NikkisCraftingCreations) we made our beautiful family of owls today at ArtWell. Great fun and great chat!

Nikki's Crafting Creations I make intricate gifts & decorations using macrame, pyrography & quilling. Contact for bespoke items

Wow - a really focussed group this morning. Starting with pretty much blank sheets of paper we created these wonderful decorated geometric patterns inspired by the Muslim tradition. Well done everyone! Next week, maybe something a little less precise.

Today at ArtWell we were inspired by the Japanese artist, Hiroshige who created 118 views of Edo. We challenged ourselves to create our own printed views of Selby with great results. As always this was accompanied by great chat and support for each other!

Inspired by our trip to the coast last weekend we capture the essence of waves this week with beautiful images created!

As a community of people we thought we’d build our own little community of characters today and here are the results!

Today at ArtWell we were exploring our imagination using a beautiful poem on the coming spring as inspiration.

Some of the Easter Eggs decorated at ArtWell today.

We’re taking a break next week for Easter but will be back with more mindful creativity on the 6th of April.

With inspiration from Paris and Redoute we had great fun painting flowers with lovely results. Again, a bit of creativity does wonders for the mind, conversation, friendship and support.

A cosy group this morning but still lovely. Today we maxed out on origami, literally in this case starting with A2 sheets of paper. Check out the photos with pens and scissors to give some scale. Great fun. Next week we’ll be taking inspiration from Paris!

Today we were reimagining Selby, creating maps that allowed us to build our aspirational towns. Starting with a blank framework we saw castles, water parks, mountains and art galleries magically emerge!

Today we explored graffiti art and tags with beautiful colourful results!

Today we had fun creating poetry on the subject of Hope. We used found words collected from books, newspapers and leaflets.

Warning, one of the later poems contains strong language - found in a very respectable book!

Today we were creating mosaics with a little inspiration from the Romans. Time really flew as we focused on cutting our paper tiles and building the mosaics - a great way to shelve worries and concerns at least for a couple of hours. Such a lovely group of people too!

Charcoal and chalks today at ArtWell, a lot of black and white with one fabulous splash of colour! Back next week creating colourful mosaics.

Make sure you look at the final complete work!

For our first creative group of 2024 we thought we would go bright and collaborate in recreating a Kandinsky. His piece is linked generating positive emotions and a sense of hope, key elements in recovery from mental health challenges - along with the lovely chat and support for each other I think a little of this definitely rubbed off on us rub off as we painted. Enjoy the images!

A quick message to wish everyone a happy new year and to share that ArtWell will be starting its 2024 season of creative activity on the 6th of January, 10am in Citizens Advice - a sure way to find happiness! Here’s a little slice of creativity from a way back when session to inspire you all.

Our last ArtWell of 2023 and what a fabulous year of creativity and friendship we have had. Our final project for 2023 was creating fabulous decorated T-shirts. Check out our wonderful creativity and we’ll see you in the new year (back on the 6th of January!)

Don’t forget to iron those T-shirts with a sheet of paper to protect your iron!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Over the last couple of weeks we’ve been getting into the festive spirit creating Christmas scenes and a little festive origami! Great results from some real focussed work (origami is incredibly mindful yet exhausting at the same time!)

Scratch art today with the themes of remembering and imagining.

Exploring the power and potential in circles!

Fun exploring the challenges of charcoal and chalk today. Great results and lovely chat and support alongside!

Mandala mindfulness at ArtWell today!

Roaring at ArtWell!