A MOTHER and daughter are two of three local artists whose work has been selected for this year’s Summer Exhibition at London’s Royal Academy, the world’s largest open submisssion contemporary art show.

“I’m over the moon,” says Valerie, whose painting Figure 1 is exhibited. “I’ve tried a few times.”

Valerie’s painting is one of 50 small canvases on the subject of memory. “The series explores how memory works, how certain circumstances and people come and go out of our memory.”

Although she had always painted, it wasn’t until 2010 that Valerie graduated with a degree in Fine Art from Hereford College of Arts. “It’s not a choice,” she says. “It’s something you have to do – you don’t decide to be an artist. It’s about making sense of the world.

“I had a teaching certificate and nursing training, but I didn’t actually work for my degree until I was in my 50s."

Before going to HCA, Valerie had worked with people with memory loss, leading to her fascination with the subject.

“I am interested in memory and how it works,” she says, adding that the painting selected for the Summer Exhibition has “a different impact” when seen on its own.

This year’s Summer Exhibition, curated by Royal Academician Tess Jaray, sees a shift away from the past as the largest gallery is devoted to small works that normally find themselves crammed in as if an afterthought.

“The large main gallery has been painted red, and it looks like a Mexican wave of paintings going round the gallery,” says Valerie.

Two years ago, a Herefordshire father and daughter, Peter and Nicky Arscott, had paintings selected for the Summer Exhibition. This year it’s a mother and daughter with Andrea McLean, Valerie’s daughter, having two circular paintings, Karuna and Metta, chosen for the annual exhibition.

Unlike her mother, Andrea has had work selected before, “but not on such a big scale.”

For Andrea, who studied at Falmouth School of Art, the Slade School of Art and the British School at Rome on an Abbey Scholarship in Painting, says that, for her, painting “is a response to the world and a way of living. You can communicate just about anything through a painting. It can encompass the whole of life, like a diary of your life’s experience.”

Andrea, who lives and works in Ledbury, has exhibited widely, including in the unique Stations of the Cross exhibition at St Michael’s Church, Discoed earlier this year.

Herefordshire-based ceramicist Ken Eastman completes a trio of local artists to have work selected for the prestigious show.

Ken exhibits widely, internationally, and has won many prestigious awards, including the Premio Faenza in Italy in 1995, the Gold Medal at the World Ceramic Exposition 2001 in Korea and the President De la Generalitat Valencia at the 5th Biennale International De Ceramica at Manises, Spain. His work is held in numerous public collections. He was elected as a member of the International Academy of Ceramics in 2003.

“Not being at all bothered about function, Eastman’s work with the pot form has been a consistent route into increasing abstraction, playing both with form and surface,”

say the biographical notes on his website.

“That is what is potentially special about ceramics – you can have body and dress, sculpture and painting, essentially connected.”

The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition runs until Sunday, August 12, open 10am to 6pm daily, Fridays until 10pm.

Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BD

Box office 0844 2090051

royalacademy.org.uk