Greetings! I am Roo Waterhouse, and I’m a Hebden Bridge artist specialising in bespoke ‘Shelf Portrait’ oil paintings of treasured and iconic books gathered together on shelves. My work brings together my love of books, my love of typography, and the joy of oil painting, to highlight and celebrate the importance and beauty of physical books and the stories/histories they hold.

I’d like to tell you about an exciting project I am working on in collaboration with the Portico Library in Manchester. When I first walked into the Por...

Some twenty five years ago when I was living in London I bought a book, just because I liked the picture on the cover. The book was about hand made ceramic tiles, and by the time I had read the book and looked at all the wonderful ceramic artworks that people had created I knew this was what I wanted to do for a living.

Apart from attending a ceramics evening class at a local college nothing much else happened for several years. I was in demand as a builder, I had no facilities of my own and I moved house several times, none of which were ...

The station building in Mytholmroyd is opening its doors this summer. We’re delighted to kick off our summer events with Open Studios, Open Space 70 the following weekend, and creative workshops in August.

You may know the building from times old or new. Some may remember the cosy waiting rooms with roaring fires and an elegant ticket office. All of that amazing Victorian heritage is still there, but this splendid building has been closed since the early 80s.

In more recent times, our charity formed to bring the derelict building back i...

I am predominantly a sculptor yet printmaking, painting and doodling do feature heavily in my creative process. My studio is a place where I play and experiment with whatever materials take my fancy at the time. Rarely do I have a clear idea of what I am going to create before starting a piece I let the materials take charge.

My recent works have been created from random found objects and scrap metal. This process resulted in me producing a collection of very unique characters which I have nicknamed my ‘Army of Creatures’.

I am ...

The drive to be creative takes many forms. I paint because I have to, it’s the heart of me. I try to capture nature with all its beauty & devastation; it’s wildness and serenity.

Peak thoughts

By Dylan Howarth

I walked towards the sunsetting peaks,

Winter cracked puddles on footpaths steadfast grip,

A walk to reflect a clarity to seek,

No one for miles the gritstone secrets rip,

The muted palette of heathers and peat,

The white broken blanket of snow; perfect,

Over the roughly trodden footpaths neat,

Keep moving forwards a mind to disse...

I love having my hands in clay. Recently I’ve really been indulging this predilection by sticking my hands in the ground on a hill above Mytholmroyd, at Forus Tree’s tree nursery, and digging out clay. It comes out a thick ochre colour, so pigmented with iron that it takes several hand scrubs to clean it off. When fired at low temperatures it’s the most vibrant terracotta; when fired high it’s a deep, West Ham maroon (I grew up in Essex).

If I knew more about geology I’d be able to say why this beautiful valley has great clay deposits, which enabled ind...

My first Open Studio in Hebden Bridge was in my house. It felt scary opening it up to the public. It was a trek for them too; the furthest end of Market Street, through a secret garden courtyard and up some stairs (passing my cat who did not like guests). But people visited and they were lovely! My neighbour’s little daughter did her own Open Studios in the garden and made a killing on her works of art.

Next time I was still at the end of Market Street in my neighbour’s beautiful shop; Hat Therapy. Some of the people that visited and bought my work...

As a child I created a world with colourful rainbows, blue cows, and pink rabbits where ordinary objects could be magical. Inevitably, I grew up and that colourful magical world became just a distant memory, it was replaced by a monotone world of blacks and greys, and my artwork to some extent followed suit.

However, all that changed when I visited Latin America, there I saw vibrant colours in use everywhere from the natural world, to art, to clothing, to houses. The vivid combinations of colours used in ordinary objects gave the whole environm...

I would describe my work as folksy, warm and joyful. I’m definitely inspired by naive art. I work in paints, mainly gouache. Sometimes I will use a photograph taken from my daily walks as a starting point or as references, but the rest is down to the imagination. The painting then becomes like an unfolding story. The canvas tells me what to do, like a puzzle I am decoding. There is often a dialogue going on, especially where animals and human animals are involved.

My brother once said my painting was a bit like Les Dawson when he played...

Hebden Bridge is abuzz with artists working towards Open Studios and I am enjoying seeing what is appearing on Instagram from my local friends.

This will be my first Open Studios for while and I am looking forward to engaging with visitors.

I am showing new work which will be a mix of small sculpture and print.

I have been busy at West Yorkshire Print Workshop, creating photoetching plates. The images are based on photos of foxes entering an interior space, implying tension and incongruity.

Fabric and fibre, weaving and knitting have bec...

A few years ago, I got in to a bit of a negative thought spiral because I’d summarised that the difference between art and craft is that craft has a purpose, and art doesn’t. To me, point of art was that it doesn’t have any point to it. I couldn’t find any counter argument that made sense alongside this and so I kept it as a belief for a long time, without even properly realising.

I’ve been looking at Maslow’s triangle of needs, and I realised that the lower tiers are more tangible, and they get more complex and personal as th...

I am a jeweller based in Linden Mill, Hebden Bridge. I work predominantly in silver with the occasional gemstone thrown in. My journey into jewellery making began when my life took an unexpected turn, finding a course and learning this new skill was a silver lining in otherwise difficult circumstances. As soon as I made my first silver ring I fell in love with the alchemy of it all and my business grew from there.

As I studied History at university, jewellery making seemed like a random departure from my planned route into journalism. ...