Faces of St Neots

This community art project invited the residents of St Neots to create portraits of themselves and each other for display at the gallery space at Love’s Farm House community centre. Portraits could be in any media but must be head and shoulders only and A4 portrait-sized. Submissions from all ages, backgrounds and artistic abilities were encouraged. We challenged people to try something new and think about how to capture the subject’s personality as well as their appearance.

A free-to-attend portrait workshop was held at Love’s Farm House to give people a chance to create portraits in a variety of media. Seven Neotists members ran workstations: Melina La Firenze was painting, Tracey Mowatt was drawing, Jo Mansfield created collage portraits, Stephen Molyneux used charcoals, Steve Mulvey took studio portrait shots, which were processed on a computer by Richard Slade, while Ben Pitt manipulating photos in vector drawing software.

88 portraits were created in total, with a little over half coming from the workshop and the rest submitted directly by members of the public. We received oil paintings, watercolours, a woodcut print, wax crayon portraits, pencil drawings and photos. All 88 were displayed at Love’s Farm House, with a launch event for artists, their families friends and members of the public. The exhibition remains on display throughout the summer of 2019 and has been seen by over 1,000 visitors per week.