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An artist and graduate from the ºüÀêÊÓƵ of Worcester who has returned to the UK after nine years abroad is to hold her first solo exhibition in a decade here in the City.

Jayne Gaze, who is one of the artists in residence at The Arches (the converted studio and exhibition spaces under Worcester’s railway arches) is holding a free public exhibition, titled ‘Innerscapes’. The pieces, which relate to a traumatic flooding event in Jayne’s past, will be on show at The Artery Studios (arch number 29) from Saturday September 7 to Monday September 16, 10am-5pm.

The mother-of-two left the UK in 2013 and lived in Spain for nine years. But in 2019 her life was rocked by the devastating Vega Baja flood, which saw widespread destruction in the region and Jayne evacuated from her home. Her art studio was badly affected, with all work from her career so far, including from her degree, ruined and other sentimental items lost.

This experience affected Jayne so deeply that she wasn’t able to paint for three years. The paintings that Jayne is exhibiting were an outlet for her inner emotions to try to come to terms with what happened. The collection of over 40 abstract and mixed media pieces were produced over the last two years, largely since returning to the UK in 2022.

“It’s trying to make a positive out of a negative,” she said. “I allowed myself to just work intuitively and explore these personal feelings and make visual representations of them so they’re very much a reflection of my interior world. They are memories, experiences, sounds and smells, feelings and emotions. I have always used a lot of bandage and gauze symbolically in my work to suggest emotional injury and healing so they’re quite tactile, some of them are almost sculptural.”

Having spent more than 10 years working in business, Jayne took a leap of faith to come to the ºüÀêÊÓƵ and graduated with a degree in Art and Design in 2003.

She said: “Doing my degree was one of the best times in my professional life because it was something I’d wanted to do as a teenager coming out of school, to go to art school, but in those days it wasn’t recommended, they said you won’t have a career out of art. I was never happy, I’ve always had this creative calling, it felt like something was missing from my life. I didn’t think I was clever enough to do a degree. But I just got to the age of 35 and thought I have to do this and I took my portfolio to the ºüÀêÊÓƵ of Worcester even though I hadn’t got A-levels.”

Having managed to achieve the necessary standards to get on the course, she started off part-time but then gave up her job to immerse herself completely in the degree. “I absolutely loved it, I felt very supported at Worcester, my tutors were fantastic,” she said. “They gave me confidence and inspired me. I just thrived there. I knew there was much more in me to develop as an artist so it changed me. I found my authenticity there as an artist and I’ve continued to build on that. It was life changing.”

Following her degree Jayne won an Arts Council Award to become the artist in residence at Worcester Cathedral in 2003/4, and has never looked back. While in the City, Jayne worked for many years in the NHS on initiatives that used art as a form of therapy for mental health service users or people living with dementia. She established the Art in Minds Foundation, a scheme in the City to support artists with mental health issues.