A Lifetime of Making at Sunny Bank Mills

Leeds’ Sunny Bank Mills Gallery welcomes two, local female artists for a new show of paintings and ceramics.

A Lifetime of Making gathers the work of ceramicist Loretta Braganza based in York, and painter Sheila El-Hassani based in Leeds. Together the show makes for a joyful celebration of colour, texture and the act of making.

Braganza was born in Mumbai and moved to the UK in 1965. Her path took her through dance, graphic arts, textile design and sculpture before arriving at ceramics in 1990. She has since been creating collections of vessels and sculptural forms in clay, experimenting with colour, texture and shape. 

The show features her newest collection Fruit and Bloom, a series of organically shaped pieces resembling fruit, inspired by the artist’s childhood memories. She explains that “Real fruit embody a feeling, aroma and luminosity of tropical colour while the imagined are stretched into surreal abstraction.” Indeed, the pieces are finished in pastel-coloured glazes of dusky pinks and lime yellows, merging the recognisable shapes with more abstract elements.

Sheila El-Hassani began her career by specialising in Graphic Arts at Leeds College of Arts in the 50s. She then went on to teach and travel, eventually producing freelance graphics design work for the Iraqi Ministry of Education. Crowds of people became her favourite subject to draw: from the people on the streets of Baghdad to the stallholders and customers in Leeds Kirkgate Market.

A Lifetime of Making features her paintings of scenes from various locations in Leeds as well as her travels around the world. With an eye for great colour combinations, El-Hassani’s pieces carry the graphic aesthetic of an artist specifically trained in the field. You might find familiar places, populated with moving figures, busy with their daily tasks, shopping in the local market or waiting for the bus. The artist is most fascinated by people’s movements and ways of capturing it.

Visit this heart-warming show of two accomplished artists with decades of experience, who work in very different ways but remain loyal to their artistic explorations.