Biography:

“Works of art are Story. Stories become lives. There can be no understanding or meaning without a story of some kind.”
Mandy Newman 2024.

Contemporary UK artist Mandy Newman was born in Watford and grew up there, and in Bushey. After completing a two year Foundation diploma at Watford School of Art (where her Course Leader was the late Peter Schmidt). She then studied for a further five years at St. Albans School of Art (Herts. College of Art & Design, now University of Hertfordshire) as a student of the painter , Graham Boyd.
Mandy Newman graduated with a First Class Honours degree twice: Once in the field of Fine Art (University of Hertfordshire 1991) afterwards winning a major prize in the UK’s New Graduates Painting Competition at The National Fine Art Degree Show Exhibition (London, 1992) and once in Creative Writing (Bucks New University 2012) where she also won three Major Awards for ‘Academic Excellence’ ( including the prestigious: Hewlett Packard-Bell’s “Most Inspiring Student Award,” “The Most Distinguished Performance on an Undergraduate Degree Programme,” and “The Most Distingulshed Performance in the Dissertation – School of Journalism, Script, & Performance.”
After graduating in Fine Art she qualified in Further and Higher Adult Education and taught in colleges, and was Adult Art Lecturer for the Open College of the Arts at the University of Hertfordshire’s Hatfield Campus. She also holds a NAFAS Diploma in Floral Art & Design.
In 1992 she was invited to join The Free Painters and Sculptors Group and was awarded Full Membership by the examining panel shortly afterwards, entitling her to show work in The Loggia Gallery, London. In 1996, she was made an ‘Honorary Fellow of the Free Painters and Sculptors’ in recognition of the consistently high standard of her work.
A strong life-long believer in Professional Artistic Workshops, she has consistently taken part in countless high-quality workshops in the fields of: Fine Art, Creative Writing for Literary Fiction, Poetry, Screenwriting, Traditional Folk Singing, and Playwriting and Directing for the Stage. These many inputs from other creative genres have all nourished and extended development of her Fine Art practice.
Mandy Newman has exhibited widely, and her work is held in many public and private art collections. Her work has been sold at auction.

Artist’s Statement
Everything has narrative. Story follows everywhere, encircling every event and experience. Life is interpreted, and meaning extracted, following thought, and action or inaction. We sift and sort through every occurrence to create a narrative that fits with our own band of concepts which is then honed and shaped according to our attributes and early experiences. Understanding and making sense of the world comes later, with the creation of memories, anxieties and hopes about a possible future.
As an artist, the creation of story inhabits the ground on which I paint or draw. I may create an obscure abstract mark, or a more transparent figuration of an event or snapshot in time, but nevertheless, there’s still some kind of narrative occurs as I create an artwork which may, (or may not) be clear to a viewer who’ll bring their own story to a painting, and overlay the original one from the artist.
Critics, curators, reviewers, historians, theoreticians, and gallerists also overlay the artist’s tale, and so a work of art expands its dimensions and the worlds it encapsulates, for its audience. This is the mystery- life of a picture. It develops aspects to stories contained within it that expand and contract according to who the viewers are.
Of course, we could, perhaps, return to the minimalist values of late modernism, and take the critic Clement Greenberg’s aesthetic to describe a painting by formal elements only (what you see is what you get) for example: colour, line, texture, light, contrast, form, shape, depth, and surface and this may seem to be a very rational approach. Indeed, it’s one that the US Abstract Expressionists and Colour field artists of the 1950s -70s remained largely true to. But I see a wider map for my own art now, which builds onto this solid ground and mixes imaginative narrative and memories, symbols, and literal motifs more figuratively and more openly, to share stories.
Abstraction has always served me well for a pictorial language that remains highly private: its true meaning reserved in essence just for the painter, and yet there is more to be added to my story, and whether that’s in abstraction or figurative techniques, the many episodes of art which chronicle and detail parts of my world continue on.
– Mandy Newman 2024

Selected Solo Exhibitions
2024 “Childhood Lost” Exhibition, The Stables Gallery, Courtyard Arts, Port Vale, Hertford.
1996 “The Birthday” Solo Exhibition, Watford Museum & Art Gallery
1995 “Pabulum” Solo Exhibition, The Old Town Hall Arts Centre, Hemel Hempstead, Herts.
1994 “Residence” Exhibition, Boxmoor, Hemel Hempstead, Herts. (Open Studios)
1993 “Seaside Donkeys ” Exhibition, Boxmoor, Hemel Hempstead, Herts. (Open Studios)
1993 “Eucharistos” Solo Exhibition, the Boxfield Gallery, Stevenage.
1992 “The Box of Recall” Exhibition, Boxmoor, Hemel Hempstead, Herts. (Open Studios
Symposium
2023 Attendee “The Moore & Mining Research Symposium& Henry Moore Drawing in the Dark Exhibition” St Albans Museum & Art Gallery & University of Hertfordshire, Dept. of Arts & Culture.

Selected Group Exhibitions, 2&3 Artist Shows, Artistic Activites and Events
2024 Hertford Arts Trail Artists’ Mannequin Exhibition”, The Brothership Gallery, Bulls Plain, Hertford.
2024 “Starting Point Inspired by Hockney and Miro Exhibition” Courtyard Arts Gallery,Port Vale, Hertford.
2024 “The Letchworth Open” The Broadway Gallery, Letchworth
2024 “The Living Memory Project – Memories of St Albans School of Art” May – Oct 24 A Collaborative Project with University of Hertfordshire (Dept. of Arts & Culture) including: A Publication of the History of St Albans School of Art, Original Artworks, Written Memories, Shared information, and an Oral History Recording for the University Archives.
2023 “A Letter in Mind 23: Changing Perspectives” Gallery Different, Fitzrovia, London W1
Also, A Letter in Mind 23: Changing Perspectives Online Exhibition.
2023 “The Letchworth Open Art Exhibition”, The Broadway Gallery, Letchworth.
2023 “Home Exhibition hyh” St Albans Visual Arts Festival, the Collective Gallery, St Albans.
2023 “Discover Bucks Museum & Art Gallery Open Exhibition” Aylesbury, Bucks.
2022 “The Art of Grieving” Selected Exhibition, St Albans Museum & Art Gallery.
2021 “A Letter in Mind:Making Your Mark”National Brain Appeal’s Online Exhibition.National Hospital Dev. London WC1
2009-2012 Creative Writing BA (Hons) Degree ( First Class) plus 3 Academic Awards for Excellence plus Major Prizes. Bucks New University.
2008-2009 Participant in writing courses & events at various venues: including Queen’s Park Art Centre, Dacorum College, Oxford University’s Dept. of Continuing Education, and multiple workshops in Cretive Writing for Screen ar The Graham Greene Festival (William Ivory) Berkhamsted, and in “Writing for the Stage” (Matt Hartley RSC) The Oxford Playhouse.
2007 Central & South American Streetchild Project: Artwork, Stories & Poetry published: Artwork pub. in two calendars.
2004 Urbis Exhibition Centre & Museum, Manchester.
2004 Talbot-Rice Gallery, Edinburgh.
2004 Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery.
2003 Howard Gardens Gallery, Cardiff.
2003 “Artworks in Mental Health” The Royal College of art, Kensington gore, London. SW7.
Followed by “artworks in Mental Health Touring Exhibition”:
2002 Grassroots Zimbabwean Visual Arts Project & Touring Show: Grassroots Zimbabwean Cultural Exchange Project: the Old Town Hall Arts Centre, Hemel Hempstead.
2000 “Artists Community Millennium Commemorative Book Project” Margaret Harvey Gallery, then touring other venues.
2000 “Framing Time” Exhibition: Artworks Group, The Margaret Harvey Gallery, University of Hertfordshire, St Albans.
1997 “Black, White, & Grey”Exhibition (FPS) the Loggia Gallery, London SW1.
1997 “Selected Artists Exhibition” (FPS) Royal Birmingham Society of Artists Gallery, Birmingham.
1997 “Honorary Fellows Exhibition”: The Loggia Gallery, London SW1.
1996 “Paintings, Prints, & Drawings”: Artworks Exhibition, Boxfield Gallery, Stevenage.
1996 “13 Artists in the Crypt”Exhibition, St Martin-in-the-Fields Church, Trafalgar Square, London WC2N.
1995 “Image &Interpretation”: Herts Visual Arts Forum Painter’s Group Exhibition, Boxfield Gallery, Stevenage.
1995 The Eastern Open Exhibition, Fermoy Gallery, King’s Lynn Arts Centre, Norfolk.
1995 “In Two Minds Exhibition” (two artists) The Knapp Gallery,Regents Park, The Inner Circle, London NW1.
1994 Artists’ Intensive Residential Workshop Week: with invited participating artists attending from Poland, the royal College of Art, and Year of 91 St Albans Graduates Collective. Bury St Edmonds, Suffolk.
1994 Artworks Group Spring Show, University of Hertfordshire, The Fielder Centre, Hatfield.
1994 Art For Mayfair: Three Artist Exhibition, 20 Grosvenor Street,Mayfair, London W1.
1993 “The Creators” Group Exhibition, Bourne Hall, Ewell.
1992 “Connecting Lines”: An English/Dutch Symposium organisers: Graham Boyd, Head of Fine Art, University of Hertfordshire (UK) and Wim Vonk, Head of Fine Art ,Gerrit Rietveld Academie (Netherlands) with critques of artworks, and exhibitions in England & Netherlands: Guest artists: Mark Curran (Installation) Kate Davis, (Mixed Media,The Royal College) & Eileen Cooper OBE RA
Connecting Lines Exhibition I The Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Connecting Lines Exhibition II the Margaret Harvey Gallery, St Albans School of Art.
1992 “Three Painters” Exhibition, Lauderdale House, Highgate, London N6
1992 “Fresh Art” The National Fine Art Degree Fair (Prize-winner) London N1.
1992 The Eastern Open Exhibition: King’s Lynn Arts Centre.
1992 University of Hertfordshire Graduate Show, Smith Galleries, covent Garden, London WC2.
1980 Indian Mural Project: Private Commision: Sutton Road, Watford, Herts Approx.(4′ x75 linear feet)
* A fuller curiculum vitae and exhibition list can be made available for gallerists and curators by appointment.