By Harrie Dearing. First published on harriedearingart.com.
I’ve Been Announced as a Featured Artist for Network of Art
I’m delighted to share that I’ve been announced as one of the featured artists for Network of Art, happening on 23rd October at Arclite House.
( Halloween edition, Mwahahha spooky!)
If you haven’t come across it before, Network of Art is a brand new event for Swindon that combines professional networking with art exhibitions in unexpected locations. Businesses and creatives in the same room, actually talking to each other.
I’ll be curating a selection of my darker pieces for this one, ’tis the season of the spooks, after all.’ Work that sits with grief, rot, and the things we’re taught to keep hidden, giving them shape instead of leaving them to fester in private… As I have said before, Art is the way I digest the chaos of life; without it, I think I’d implode, melting into a puddle like the witch at the end of the Wizard of Oz.
Something I’ve Never Shown Before
Alongside the paintings, I’m bringing something I’ve genuinely never put in front of an audience: a set of secret objects & crafts that were never meant for a gallery at all. Handmade altar crafts and curios, made for my own personal rituals as a practicing pagan. They’re rough, unpolished, and intimate, a different kind of honesty to the paintings, but the same source.
My art and my witchcraft, displayed together for the first time. If you come along, you’re not just seeing the work, you’re getting a bit closer to the heart and soul behind it.
Sharing the Space With Charlotte Snipe
I’ll be exhibiting alongside Charlotte Snipe, a British painter and multi-media artist based here in Wiltshire, and it feels like a good pairing, different work, same instinct to get underneath the surface of things.
Where mine tends to sit in the dark and stay there, Charlotte’s is about how emotion moves through the body. Her practice spans portraiture, both realist and abstract, and abstract expressionism, all built around one core theme: grief, pain, happiness, the ordinary weight of day-to-day life, and how the body carries all of it.
”Charlotte Snipe is a British painter and multi-media artist based in Wiltshire. Her work spans across portraiture both in realism and abstract, as well as abstract expressionist to explore her core theme. Charlotte’s work focuses on emotion and the way this is both created and expressed in the human body; grief, pain, happiness, and the day to day goings on. Her use of varied materials aids Charlotte in her exploration in the way in which emotion is portrayed through her work. Working between a minimal palette to draw you into the relationship between shape and expression, to complex layers that can evoke a sense of calm in the chaos. Through her work, Charlotte invites the viewer to pause and take a moment for themselves, to process the detail, and take a deep breath.”
Two different ways of processing what it means to feel something, in the same room, on the same spooky night. ( and pumpkins, there will almost definitely be pumpkins )
You can find Charlotte’s work at charlottesnipe.art or on Instagram @charlottesnipeart.
About Network of Art
Network of Art is organised by Sinister Solutions and Evil Empire Marketing, two Swindon-based businesses joining forces to bring the local creative scene together.
Sinister Solutions is run by Sally Fox-Price, who spent over a decade in the professional sports industry, including as Commercial Manager at a professional ice hockey club, before setting up her own consultancy to help businesses and events in Swindon grow with clarity and structure. She’s well known across the Swindon business community for helping deliver major public events.
Evil Empire Marketing was founded by Sara Witham in 2019 as an outsourced marketing department for small and medium businesses, covering everything from strategy and content to PR and event management, and has grown from one client into a full team working across the UK.
Between them, Sally and Sara are bringing that same organisational energy to Swindon’s creative scene, building a space where artists and audiences can actually connect, not just show and sell.
Their previous event put the spotlight on Judee Tree Art (Judy Guillery) and her son, Morgan G Makes, at the Richard Jefferies Museum in Coate , a fitting venue, given the gallery there exists specifically to champion local, independent artists. Judy is well known around Swindon for her illustrative, scribbled style; she designed Swindog, the balloon-dog sculpture that became one of the faces of the town’s Big Dog Art trail.
The Details
” Do the monster mash down to Arclite House in Peatmoor, Swindon, a creative space owned by Hypha Studios, a charity bringing art and culture to local communities through free exhibition and studio spaces.
It’s a Halloween edition, so we’re keeping the evening relaxed, informal, and naturally a little bit spooky. Wear your most fiendish fancy dress if you fancy being in with a chance of winning one of the prizes on the night, and there might be a few other tricks and treats up their sleeves too.
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When: Friday 23rd October 2026, from 5pm until the last corpse standing
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Where: Arclite House, Century Road, Peatmoor, Swindon, SN5 5YN
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Entry: Free, with free parking
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Drinks on arrival and a spread of food
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Two incredible local artists (that’s me and Charlotte)
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Halloween-themed competitions and great networking
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Dress code: whatever you’re comfortable in, but make it Halloween if you’d like to win a prize
Tickets are on Eventbrite. ”
I’ll be there all evening if you want to talk about the work, the witchcraft, or both.
You can also follow along and see more of my work at Studio BRUT