Marilyn wins the visitors hearts at Macclesfield Open Art Exhibition

The 2014-15 Macclesfield Open Art Exhibition, held at the Silk Museum on Park Lane, has now ended.

Three prizes have been awarded for outstanding works. Two of the awards, to well-known local artists Steven Bewsher and Ralph McGaul, were announced and presented at the start of the exhibition.

The third, however, has only just been announced – the Visitors’ Choice Award.

Visitors to the exhibition were encouraged to vote for their favourite work and over the past two months hundreds have done so.

The votes have now been counted and a winner has emerged.

Of the 169 works exhibited 88 recieved at least one vote. Works by Geoff Beard, Wayne Blackhurst, Helen Brocklehurst, Penny Broadbent, Patty Callaghan, Sue Guildford, Hifumi Ogasahara and Sonia Shepherd were all very popular, though in the end it came down to a straight ‘fight’ between four artists with just two votes separating them.

Bollington artist Ruth Smith’s delicate watercolour ‘Brown Hare Watching’ and Macclesfield artist Helen Wright’s understandably popular ceramic sculpture ‘I Have a Coat the Same Colour as My Dog’ tied for third place.

Another local artist, Ann Robertson, came second with her outstanding lino print ‘Lodgepole Pine’.

In first place however, and the winner of the £200 Visitors’ Choice Award, was Marilyn Rhind for her semi-abstract landscape painting ‘Summertime’.

Marilyn, who was born in Manchester in 1948, only took up painting in 2004. Following her retirement in 2010 she has concentrated full time on her art.

She divides her time between her home in Deganwy, North Wales, and her studio in Stockport.

As she explains, “painting with palette knives gives my work the colour and texture I wish to achieve and injects a contemporary edge to some traditional subjects”.

Marilyn’s work proved particularly popular with visitors to the Macclesfield Open with a second painting also receiving numerous votes.