AS WELL as organising this year’s Swindon Open Studios – which starts on Saturday – artists Rachel Pryor and Jane Milner-Barry will also be displaying their work.

This year is the eighth time the annual event, which runs on the first two weekends in September, has been staged.

This year more than 50 artists will be displaying work across 39 different locations this weekend, September 5 and 6, and across Saturday and Sunday, September 12 and 13.

Rachel and Jane will be throwing open the doors to their artistic world at Jane’s house, in St Margaret’s Road, Old Town, between 11am and 5pm on all four days.

Jane said: “Fellow artist Rachel Prior will also be there with her paintings, and Lucy Britton will have her unique homewares, stationery and accessories for sale, so there will be lots going on.

“I paint landscapes, still lives and portraits, and I’ll be including some beach scenes I painted in Holland earlier this summer.

"I always work in oils. What I love is the play of light on whatever I’m looking at, whether it is a face, a vase of flowers or a landscape.

“One of the best things about living in Swindon is being able to drop in on the Swindon Museum and Art Gallery where we can study some very fine paintings.”

Rachel, too, is a painter, who allows her Christian beliefs to influence her creative work.

“Apart from impressionist landscapes I also feel impelled to try to visualise aspects of my prayer life as a lifelong Christian,” she said.

“Prayer flows in and round and through each day, and brings light into even the darkest areas of life’s ups and downs, and I hope my images help remind me of that whenever I need it.

“I began painting about eight years ago as a way of trying to capture the transient beauty that I can see around me.

“You might think that’s more easily done with a camera and it’s true to some extent, but painting allows me to express something of my individual view. Colour, light, composition and interpretation are individual to every human being.

“Some people take up painting in retirement years, but the reason I started in middle-age is that there is a lot of age-related blindness in my family.

“Sargy Mann was an artist who carried on as he lost his sight slowly over many years, even the last 10 years when he was totally blind.

“He’s been a huge inspiration to me and I love his work.

“The reason he could carry on, of course, is due to the vast visual memory and experience he built up over a lifetime.

“And that’s why I’ve started now, well before sight loss challenges me, so that I might know enough to sustain my painting if or when my sight goes the same way as my parents and brother.”

For more about Jane visit www.janemilner-barry.co.uk or Rachel visit www.rachelpryorartist.co.uk.

For more about Swindon Open Studios visit www.swindonopenstudios.org.uk.