Gail Hoban - Taking a Walk with a Ballpoint Pen

Gail is a visual artist specialising in original ballpoint pen drawings and print depicting trees, lichen, mosses and native UK wild plants. She has a deep connection to the natural environment near her North Essex home and wants to share her many observations through art. Her intricate work has an underlying message, she is frustrated by the limited and controlled access available to the majority of people. She is conscious of how fragile access to nature is, with many footpaths being over farmland and through private woodlands.

Gail’s work focuses on land use and the access to nature that is shared or prohibited by landowners.

She is interested in how the level of access is communicated giving a negative or positive experience to our outdoors life.

Gail’s previous background in graphic design and branding has led to a love of typography and interest in the power of communication. Gail is interested in how we are guided through and away from nature by manmade signs. Gail creates a deliberate contrast with the starkness of manmade signs against nature’s intricate backdrop, drawing viewers in through the beauty of trees, wild plants and their settings to read the messages in the signs.

In this exhibition Gail wants to highlight both the opportunities and manmade obstacles to connecting with nature.

You can meet Gail at the Meet the Artist exhibition launch in the afternoon of 7th March, where she will be working on one of her intricate pieces, see separate event.

She will also run a ballpoint pen workshop at Haddenham Arts Centre on Sunday 8th March, suitable for nature lovers who would like to experiment using ballpoint pens in art. You can learn more about Gail’s workshop here