Rosie Callinan

Rosie Callinan designs and creates original mosaics, garden sculptures and ornaments. She draws her inspiration from the natural world and incorporates natural and found materials including pebbles, stones, and sea glass.

Her work is varied and she enjoys working in different media, so from time to time she will display items made from felted wool, stained glass, papier-mache, driftwood or landscape paintings in oils, or what ever her latest exploration of craft has inspired her to use.

With recycling and conservation of materials in mind she usually has upcycled tables on display. These have been given a new lease of life with the addition of a new mosaic surface. The designs reflect the style of the table and each one is unique. Other items are made using broken crockery to decorate the surface.

One of her passions is creating mosaics made from pebbles and stones that have been individually picked up from beaches and other places. Most of the pebbles come from an area of Spain that has diverse geology resulting in multicolours and occasionally minerals such a garnets. The collection also includes Icelandic volcanic pebbles, thin ones from Norweigan fjords, flints from the coast of southern England, and many other places, reflecting Rosie’s love of travelling.

Some of the recent mosaics, such as the Winter Birches have been made with marble and smalti. Most of the marble has been gleaned from a Spanish marble quarry and also scrap heaps and skips belonging to Marble works. Smalti consists of coloured glass chunks that come from Italy and have been used for centuries in mosaics decorating churches, especially from the Bysantine era.