A NEW exhibition will open in Ulverston on Monday July 24, coinciding with the popular Ulverston Buddhist Festival.

South Lakes Arts Collective members Faiqa Aslam, Marilyn Hale and Shivangi Pandey all have work featured in Balance, which will be shown at Natterjacks café and art gallery until September.

Faiqa works in Barrow, Marilyn works from her studio at Newlands, near Ulverston, and Shivangi lives and works in New Delhi, in India.

The Buddhist festival takes place in Ulverston between the Friday July 21 and Saturday August 5, with the exhibition exploring similar ideals.

Tim Leeson, founder of South Lakes Arts Collective, says: "After a discussion with Valerie Madden, the joint-curator and owner of Natterjacks, we thought it would be nice to put on an exhibition which tied in with the festival."

Faiqa, explaining her distinctive artwork, which often features Arabic calligraphy, says: "You never know what's going to strike your soul, it might be an attitude, emotions, experience, imagination, reality, it could be anything.


"I get inspiration from every aspect of nature and love to play with colours in my own way. I do not limit myself to one medium, style or concept and my work is my own interpretation of different experiences."

Marilyn Hale is a well-known glass artist, who discovered stone balancing as a meditative art form two years ago. She has incorporated it into her recent work for this exhibition.

Each pebble or stone is handmade and fired to imitate ones she has seen on the beach. These are then stacked on a base glass to replicate a beach scene or a 'balance', and fired again.

Award-winning Indian painter Shivangi Pandey recently exhibited her colourful semi-abstract pieces at The Dock Museum in the South Lakes Arts Collective's Horizons exhibition.

She says: "I am a spiritual being, and I have a strong faith in humanity and in the power of the universe.

"There are two domains in life, we can either live in light, or in the darkness. Either Circumstances have control over our lives, or we can have control over the circumstances of life.

"I am an engineer by profession but inside I knew I was always an artist. While creating art I feel connected to my supreme soul. This made me realise that nothing changed around me but from the inside I completely changed as a person.

"Art I believe is a powerful tool to serve mankind and to people suffering from mental illness. Art can be used as a conversation piece and it transcends the language barrier."

Balance will be on display at Natterjacks, in Queen Street, Ulverston, from July 24 to September 1, Monday to Friday, from 3pm to 10pm.