Embedded Files
Private view: Thursday 9 April, 5pm to 8pm
The artists featured in Tilting at Windmills were invited for the depth, originality, and conviction within their work. Together, they form a diverse and thoughtful response to the spirit of Don Quixote.
Sharon Baker
Web: www.sharonbaker.co.uk IG: @sharonbakerartistprintmakerSharon Baker
Biography
Sharon is a printmaker working with photo-etching, lithography and monoprint. Her prints have been shown in exhibitions in Europe and the UK including in the House of Commons. Winner of the Westmorland Landscape Prize (2019). Awarded a printmaking residency in Germany by the Coventry-Dresden Arts Exchange (2022). Recent exhibitions (2025) include the Coventry Open, International Original Print Exhibition, ING Discerning Eye and the Leamington Spa Open (2026).
About the work
‘Portrait of the Peerless Dulcinea of Toboso on a grain of wheat (enlarged)’ A make-believe vision of Dulcinea inspired by a passage where Don Quixote demands a group of merchants swear Dulcinea is the most beautiful woman in the world although they have never seen her (and she does not exist): “I implore your grace to have the goodness to show us a portrait of this lady, even if it is no larger than a grain of wheat”.
Works in the Exhibition
The Happy CouplePhotogravureEV (Edition Varied) of 20. (10 printed in Black, 10 printed in Van dyke Brown) on Hahnemuhle 300gsmImage size H41.5 x W59.5cmFramed 60 x 75cm
Framed Price: £700 Unframed editions available price: £500
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Portrait of the Peerless Dulcinea of Toboso on a grain of wheat (enlarged)PhotogravureEdition of 10 printed on Hahnemuhle 300gsmImage size 20 x 29cmFramed 52 x 42cmFramed Price: £300 Unframed editions available price: £200
Sales are handled directly by the artist.
Joss Burke (France)
Web: https://axisweb.org/artist/jossburke IG: @jossburkeJoss Burke (France)
Biography
Joss Burke is an artist, curator and educator working in France and for Birmingham City University.
Her practice spans drawing, print, installation and sculpture, engaging with relationships between the natural world and cultural exchange. Her garden, Cairnhill in France, opens annually as part of the National Festival Rendez-vous aux Jardins, organised by the Minister of Culture.
In 2024 she presented Cairnhill at a symposium on Natural Pigments at Joshibi University of Art and Design, Tokyo.
About the work
The sculptures created for Tilting at Windmills were developed from drawings of illustrations by Gustave Doré for the 1863 French edition L’Ingénieux Hidalgo Don Quichotte de la Manche.
Exploring the visual and ecological connection between windmill forms and natural power, Joss constructed the works from materials gathered in her garden, Cairnhill.
Wind power has undergone a transformation. No longer relics of agrarian economies, windmills have become turbines, sleek white monuments to renewable energy and environmental urgency, though for some they remain fearful giants.
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Works in the Exhibition
SculpturesWillow and cotton thread105 x 105 x 16 cm160 x 170 x 30 cm140 x 140 x 30 cm, unfinished
DrawingsGraphite on paper3 x A5
Sales are handled directly by the artist.
Robert Chard
Robert Chard
Biography
Born 1956.Studied BA Fine Art at Birmingham Polytechnic (1977 to 1980).Has exhibited extensively across the West Midlands.
About the work
Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote follows adventures of fantasy that are divorced from reality, something akin to a Walter Mitty syndrome.
This echo carries down the ages. Two hundred years later, you might think of Goya’s images of witches, giants and flying machines. It even relates to modern fiction, for example Harry Potter, showing how the human imagination has a timeless fascination with the subject. I have used a composite of Goya’s work to illustrate this, my own flights of fantasy.
⸻Works in the Exhibition
1. Study for Flights of Fantasy , 43 x 53 cmBlack and white photocopy on paper, in wood and glass frame 
2. Study for Flights of Fantasy , 43 x 53 cmColour acrylic on paper, with photocopies, in wood and glass frame 
3. Flights of Fantasy , 43 x 53 cmColour acrylic on canvas, with photocopies, in wood frame 
4. Study for Flights of Fantasy , 43 x 38 cmColour acrylic on canvas, with photocopies, in wood frame 
5. Study for Flights of Fantasy , 43 x 38 cmColour acrylic on canvas, with photocopies, in wood frame 
Sales are handled directly by the artist.
Graham Chorlton
IG: @grahamchorltonGraham Chorlton
Biography
Graham Chorlton is a painter living and working in Birmingham. He has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally, including the John Moores Liverpool Exhibition, Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, Prague Biennale, MAC Birmingham, Royal Hibernian Academy Dublin, New Art Gallery Walsall, Cross Gallery Dublin, Botanical Gardens Bordeaux, and EAST Norwich.
His work is held in collections including Soho House, the Office of Public Works Ireland, New Art Gallery Walsall, De Veres Dublin, Birmingham University, and private collections.
About the work
The starting point for these paintings was the extraordinary series of illustrations to Don Quixote by the 19th century French illustrator Gustave Doré.
Focusing on Doré’s images of place and landscape, and following the journeyings of the Don, Graham has taken fragments and reimagined them as paintings within the Romantic tradition.
This sense of a world that feels real yet slightly unreal echoes Quixote’s own shifting perception of reality.
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Works in the exhibition
Mountain PassAcrylic on canvas40 × 30 cm
Additional works in the exhibition
Sales are handled directly by the artist.
Frank Edmunds
Frank Edmunds
Biography
It has been some 50 years since Frank Edmunds left Birmingham Art College after completing a Master’s degree in Fine Art Sculpture. He has exhibited sculpture and wall assemblages regularly in mixed and solo exhibitions throughout England, including at the Icon and MAC, Birmingham, the National Garden Festival, Stoke on Trent, Midland View 4 in Coventry, and as a prize winner at the Dudley Open.
In the early 2000s he worked in bronze and was commissioned to create three large figurative sculptures now held in the permanent collection at The Sculpture Park, Farnham, Surrey. More recently, he has been working as co curator of a small gallery space at The Old Moseley Arms, Birmingham, and is enjoying a renewed focus on painting.
About the work
These paintings attempt to contextualise Cervantes’ characters through a contemporary lens. In one work, the unlikely relationship between the ageing and delusional Don Quixote and the radiant Dulcinea is reframed with humour, suggesting that perhaps the only common ground they might share is a love of reggae music.
The Golden Helmet of Mambrino reflects on Quixote’s act of taking another man’s property. The painting suggests that such an act could “tilt” the fabric of reality itself. A reminder, perhaps, to be careful what you wish for.
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Works in the Exhibition
The Lady Dulcinea of Toboso and Don Quixote of La Mancha. Lovers of…….ReggaeAcrylic on canvas80cm x 30cm
The Golden Helmet of MambrinoAcrylic on canvas80cm x 30cm
Sales are handled directly by the artist.
Peter Grego
Web: axisweb.org/artist/petergregoPeter Grego
Biography
Peter Grego is an artist and curator based in Birmingham. He has exhibited nationally and internationally. He was the Director of the International Project Space, Birmingham, from 2002-2012. From 2017-2022, he organised and curated exhibitions for Galerie Mayci in Moseley, Birmingham.
His own practice deploys a range of media, photography, film/video, digital and traditional printmaking, to engage with questions of nationality, location, identity, and historical memory. The work often focuses on personal narratives to explore tensions arising between individual identity and that of community and national identity. Currently, he is exhibiting a three-part installation, Mrs B: A Handsworth Life, in conjunction with the National Trust, at Birmingham Back to Backs.
Amongst other solo exhibitions, in 2014 he exhibited a series of prints at the museum, Maison Municipal Frugès-Le Corbusier. The prints related to Corbusier’s work at Cité Frugès, in the French town of Pessac and referenced the publication, Urbanisme. (Corbusier 1925)
Since 2008, he has been involved in an ongoing Anglo/French exchange, working with artists in Bordeaux and Birmingham on interdisciplinary, site-specific projects. Projects have also been developed and exhibited nationally in the UK and internationally in North and South America plus several European countries.
About the work
Fake states, States?A world out of kilter, Tilting from us.
Is it possible to read Don Quixote in 2026 without pondering, more widely, deluded masculinity?
Works in the Exhibition
FAKE STATES 1
Digital mixed media print on archival paper, Edition 25 £90 unf
FAKE STATES 2
Digital mixed media print on archival paper, Edition 25 £90 unf
Sales are handled directly by the artist.
Helen Grundy
IG: @helen_grundy_artistHelen Grundy
Biography
Helen Grundy is a working-class artist based in Birmingham. She creates hybrid works using photography, photomontage, collage, and object and model making. Alongside her practice, she works in homeless services.
Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. She has received Arts Council funding to deliver projects and was awarded a DYCP in 2022. She currently has a solo exhibition at The Level Centre in Derbyshire and will present a solo show in 2027 as the first prize winner of the Outside In national exhibition Shelter, previously shown at New Art Gallery Walsall and Christie’s Auction House, London.
Grundy was selected for Twenty Twenty at New Art Gallery Walsall, where her work was acquired for the permanent collection. She has exhibited at Kaos, The International Festival of Collage, and presented public art in Slovenia. In 2024 she was selected for CHEAP Street Art Festival in Bologna, where her work was produced as a city-wide billboard.
She was commissioned by Lubaina Himid for a billboard project as part of Found Cities, Lost Objects: Women in The City, in partnership with Arts Council England and Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery. Additional selections include Surreal Solihull and a shortlist for The Venice Fellowship with the British Council. She is a board member of The Midlands Artist Advisory Group and an ambassador for the national charity Outside In.
About the work
This work uses collage to mirror the way Don Quixote assembles himself from fragments of armour, literature, and longing. Like Cervantes’ knight, who fashions his helmet from scraps and renames an ordinary woman Dulcinea to elevate her into an ideal, Grundy constructs figures from found images, fabrics, and digital elements.
The process reflects the layered, unstable realities of the novel. By piecing together armour and an imagined beloved, the work references Quixote’s act of self-invention, a man reshaping the world through belief. Collage becomes both method and metaphor for fantasy, devotion, and the fragile architecture of idealism.
Works in the Exhibition
Chivalric SimulacrumHybrid image of photomontage, digital collage and drawingFramed size: 85 x 65 cm
£450 Framed
Prints available £125
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Sales are handled directly by the artist.
This work uses collage to mirror the way Don Quixote assembles himself from fragments of armour, literature, and longing. Like Cervantes’ knight, who fashions his helmet from scraps and renames an ordinary woman Dulcinea to elevate her into an ideal, Grundy constructs figures from found images, fabrics, and digital elements.
The process reflects the layered, unstable realities of the novel. By piecing together armour and an imagined beloved, the work references Quixote’s act of self-invention, a man reshaping the world through belief. Collage becomes both method and metaphor for fantasy, devotion, and the fragile architecture of idealism.
Works in the Exhibition
Chivalric SimulacrumHybrid image of photomontage, digital collage and drawingFramed size: 85 x 65 cm
£450 Framed
Prints available £125
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Sales are handled directly by the artist.
Paul Newman
Web: https://paul-newman.net/ IG: @paulhnewmanPaul Newman
Biography
Paul Newman is an artist based in Birmingham and a member of Contemporary British Painting. Recent exhibitions include, Unquiet Landscapes, Yorkshire Art Space, 2026, Solihull Surreal 2025. Previous exhibitions include; Contemporary Masters from Britain; a five museum touring show in China 2017 and ‘Stage’, a solo show at mac Birmingham in 2015. He has work in collections at New Art Gallery Walsall, The Prizeman Seabrook Collection and the Jiangsu Art Museum in China. Paul is a lecturer in Fine Art at Loughborough University
About the work
Don Quixote has appeared in various iterations throughout Paul’s practice, alongside figures such as Frankenstein’s Monster, exploring the idea of an endless quest within a shapeshifting, unstable environment. These works reference historical and Romantic landscape painting.
Paul also draws on The End of the Trail, a mass-produced sculpture by James Earle Fraser, first exhibited in 1894, depicting a weary Native American figure on horseback. Its later appearance on The Beach Boys’ 1971 album Surf’s Up further informs Paul’s interpretation of Don Quixote.
The resulting paintings act as metaphors for both personal and artistic journeys, seeking stability in an increasingly uncertain world.
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Works in the Exhibition
Don Quixote II: Yellow Mountain, 2021Acrylic on canvas210 × 140 cmP.O.A.
Weltandschaft Resting Place (after Joachim Patinir), 2026Mixed media on paper30 × 42 cm£495
The Approach, 2026Mixed media on paper30 × 42 cm£495
All sales are handled directly by the artist.
Tom Ranahan
IG: @tomsotherworkTom Ranahan
Biography
Tom Ranahan studied BA (Hons) Fine Art at North Staffordshire Polytechnic in 1985.
Exhibition highlights include RBSA Photography Open 2019, 2021 and 2025, Ikon Open 2021, West Midlands Open at New Art Gallery Walsall 2022, Birmingham Open (Light) 2025, Surreal Solihull 2025 to 2026, and Dialogue, a British French artist group with exhibitions across the UK and France.
He was selected for East International 2006 and exhibited at Zoo International Art Fair, Royal Academy, London, 2007.
About the work
Tom is exhibiting a series of photographs taken during a recent trip to Spain, tracing the landscapes and stories associated with Don Quixote.
Staying in Alcalá de Henares, the birthplace of Cervantes, and visiting the windmills of La Mancha, he retraced elements of Quixote’s legendary journey. The work reflects a personal exploration of place, memory and literary history, drawing on the iconic episode in which Quixote mistakes windmills for giants.
The selected images aim to capture the spirit of that quest.
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Works in the Exhibition
Three photographic series:
In Search of Don Quixote8 colour photographs, Alcalá de Henares
The Landscape of La Mancha6 colour photographs
Windmills of Consuegra6 colour photographs
Mainly A3+ framed, with some variation in size.
Sales are handled directly by the artist.
Stephen Earl Rogers 
Web: stephenearlrogers.co.uk IG: @stephen_earlrogersStephen Earl Rogers 
Biography
Stephen Earl Rogers is an artist based in the West Midlands. He is highly sought after for his portrait work, with continuous worldwide commissions for more than two decades. When not working to commission, he creates paintings in series. He has shown at the National Portrait Gallery, Royal Academy Summer Show, Ikon Gallery, Creekside Open APT London, and Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.
Stephen is represented by a number of UK galleries, and his work is held widely in private and public collections across the UK and overseas.
About the work
Stephen’s work in the exhibition explores art as reenactment, or retelling. Using a photograph from Tom Ranahan’s trip to La Mancha, Spain as its starting point, he reinterprets the landscape and introduces figures drawn from other artists’ re-tellings of Don Quixote, pulling in references from film and animation. The central figures come from the 1957 Soviet film Don Kikhot, and Don Kihot (1961), an experimental animated short by Vlado Kristl. 
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Works in the Exhibition
Title: Reenactmentmedium: oil on board dimensions: 28 x 44.6 cm (unframed) 
Sales are handled directly by the artist.
Alastair Scruton
Alastair Scruton
Biography
Alastair Scruton studied Sculpture and Printmaking at Carlisle College of Art & Design and North Staffordshire Polytechnic.
He is a contributor to HiVE, a collaborative project between artists in the West Midlands and the Southwest, 2019 to 2021. He has been Co curator of The Courtyard Gallery, Birmingham since 2021.
Alastair is a founder member of Birmingham Artists Group and a member of Birmingham Art Trust. He was also a founder member of Birmingham Print Workshop, 1980 to 1994.
He has exhibited widely across the Midlands, including MAC, Birmingham; Derngate Centre, Northampton; Worcester City Art Gallery; Stafford Art Gallery; Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. Further exhibitions include Vortex Gallery, London; Blackpool Print Biennale; The International Maritime Organization, London; and The Hotsuka Centre, Tokyo
About the work
These prints depict an imagined landscape constructed from multiple collaged images.
The figure of Don Quixote on horseback is based on John McKenna’s sculpture Olton King, located outside Olton railway station.
The accompanying sketches explore the “Giants” that inhabit the Digbeth and Deritend area, just south of Birmingham city centre. Through this lens, the historic narrative of Don Quixote is relocated into a contemporary, local landscape.
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Works in the Exhibition
Works in the Exhibition
La Mancha No 12026Inkjet print39 × 29 cm
Into the Night2026Inkjet print39 × 29 cm
Giants No 52026Inkjet print21 × 29.7 cm
Giants No 132026Inkjet print21 × 29.7 cm
Giants No 162026Inkjet print21 × 29.7 cm
Giants No 212026Inkjet print21 × 29.7 cm
Sales are handled directly by the artist.
Lee Williams (USA)
Lee Williams (USA)
Biography
Lee Williams is a US-based artist whose practice explores sculptural ideas through drawing, installation and text-based work. His recent exhibitions include What’s the Difference? Sculptural Ideas at Burlington City Arts, Vermont, and Mixed Messages at Wren Gallery, New Hampshire, both in 2026.
In 2025 he presented My Head Is Too Big for My Body at Gallery 45, River Valley School of Art, and participated in Sculptural Shenanigans at Left Bank Gallery, Vermont.
His commissioned projects include Number 9 for Art on the Trails, Massachusetts, Art in the Yard at Oxford Free Library, and The Art of Fruit, Art in the Orchard in Easthampton, Massachusetts.
About the work
Dear TomPostcards with text
Dapple, Sancho’s donkey gets stolen in Part 1 Chapter 23, or does he? Could he just be on a journey of personal exploration and growth. Maybe he just had enough of the idiocy? Did he need time to reflect on his character, beliefs and values? Perhaps it was time for a vacation. Vermont?
Anyway, Dapple has to be back for Part 1 Chapter 30.
Or does he?
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Works in the Exhibition
Dear TomPostcards with text
£500
Sales are handled directly by the artist.
Emma Woolley
Emma Woolley
Web: emma-woolley.co.uk IG: @emma_woolley_artist
Biography
Emma Woolley is a Birmingham-based figurative painter whose work centres on psychologically charged portraiture. Working primarily in oil, her paintings explore belief, emotional endurance and the inner states carried within the human face.
Emma studied Fine Art at Wolverhampton School of Art before completing a second BA in Graphic Design and Illustration at Coventry School of Art. Alongside her painting practice she has worked for over two decades as an art director within the creative industries, shaping visual campaigns across branding, publishing and moving image.
In 2025 she published her first monograph Paint Lingers, documenting The Wonder Series, and was shortlisted for the Women in Art Prize. She exhibits regularly across the West Midlands and is a core member of United Artists of South Birmingham. Her forthcoming two-person exhibition Collision, with Tara Harris, opens at Seventh Circle Gallery in 2026.
About the work
Once More
Oil on linen canvas
90 × 122 cm
Price on request
Once More responds to “tilting at windmills” as a psychological state rather than a literal scene. The figure rides forward, yet there is no horse beneath him. The work sits in the tension between belief and reality, where conviction overrides logic. Hints of armour appear, but they feel symbolic rather than functional. This is not a portrait of heroism, but of endurance. It speaks to the human tendency to hold onto belief, even when reality contradicts it.
Works in the Exhibition
Once More
Oil on linen canvas
90 × 122 cm
£1981
Once More
10 Limited edition prints available
20 x 16
£125
Sales are handled directly by the artist.
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