Dale Mackie  is a painter who depicts a lost heritage in such vivid hues that the disappearing world he commemorates seems instantly revived. More celebratory than nostalgic, Dale’s work punches you in the senses like a North Sea blast off the Dogger Bank.

Mackie, the man and artist, is East coast through and through, and may well have the North Sea running through his veins, such is the inspiration he finds from the fishing industry.

In his own words: “Of particular interest are the situations of men at work, human interactions and relationships that are captured in iconic scenes of fishing trawlers rough and marred by use and the elements or, emotive paintings of fish sales on the old Pontoon that literally bustle with characters trying to be recognised.” Nice one Dale, you are putting the Great in Grimsby… and isn’t that Whitby too!?

Matt Hyde is a Grimsby ex-pat and founding partner in Glitchers, creators of award winning games and interactive products for your smart devices. Who knew a chap from Grimsby could actually earn a living doing this sort of stuff?

As you will see, their in-house graphic style is fresher than a Cleethorpes teenager after a sniff of Lynx. Consequently, demand for their work is high; Such serious corporate folk as Channel 4, Warner Bros, Mr Porter and even Cadbury Mondelelz have all had business scratches that Matt and his pals have ahem… glitched: Mondelez turned to Matt to help them reverse the global decline of chewing gum; it seems nobody buys it anymore.

This is very good news for the pavements of the world, but terrifyingly bad if you happen to be a manufacturer of gummy confectionary. To promote their Stride brand, the company commissioned Glitchers to stimulate a bit of demand for the chewy stuff  with a game app called Gumulon; a chewing controlled game app! Which frankly sounds bonkers, but check out the above TV ad for an explanation that will outshine anything we might muster.

Battered Dreams

Perhaps in a homage to his GY roots, Hyde has also created (among other things) a multiple award winning game in which you run your own chip shop called, appropriately enough, Chippy. It’s available to download on iTunes and is generally raved about in the gaming community. Pass the salt Matt, you are definitely putting the great in Grimsby.

Sarah Webb  works with oil and canvas but she sure ain’t a sailor. She was born to paint, not decorate, and draws on her GY East Coast heritage as a fulcrum for her life and work. Check out this glorious rendition of Cleethorpes Pier by Ms Webb to see how the starkly familiar becomes the startlingly alien… in a good way.

Sarah’s world view is broader than our beloved home town though, she has lived and worked in Andalusia and Madrid, while exhibiting in many countries. (Visit her site here) Her work has also graced the walls of the National Portrait Gallery in that London!

A major broadsheet reports a positive news story about Grimsby. It’s a shocker, but it’s true. As featured in The Independent, our town has been lauded as the Green Energy capital of England, knocking the major cities of London and Birmingham into a cocked hat in the process. In fact, the efforts of those two cities in the field of renewable energy were decried as feeble with contributions of under 1 % in the case of the Capital city.  Pathetic London! While wind and solar energy remain much debated as a fuel for the future, a quick look at the comments section in the Independent will attest to this, Grimsby seems to be embracing clean energy with an open mind.

It’s strangely compelling to look at, hypnotic even, but what the hell does it mean, and who is responsible?

Gillian Hobson is a Grimsby artist with quite a lot to show off about: She is a Doctor of Fine Art; she’s an author with a commission from the NHS to explore creativity in helping sufferers recover from mental illness, and (though she may not describe herself as such) she is a sculptor of light operating out of her studio on the South Bank of our beloved Humber.

Now light is not a touchy feely material; you can’t take a chisel to a shapeless lump of the stuff, fashion an object into a recognisable form and put it in your garden for the neighbours to coo over. The physics just do not work like that, and trying to explain it in  esoteric terms, as you find artists inevitably do, will see most of us get lost in the language.

The best thing is to merely stand in its glow, look at it for a bit, get lost in it, and maybe even point. Which means you, the viewer, are the prism through which the work is refracted. Her art in that context is not about what it means, but what it achieves. Which in some cases is the relief of suffering for the mentally ill. Now that is meaningful. Nice one Gill. (Check film here)

Woman With a Fish, AKA Sue Stone, is a totally unique and original Grimsby voice.  An artist and maker who works in hand stitch, machine embroidery and mixed media to juxtapose often gritty modern urban scenarios and graffiti art with between the wars, homely, nostalgia. The medium of thread making the contrast both jarring and engaging. It’s also funny, but in an odd sort of a way, as opposed to rolling round the floor in err… stitches. The quirky humour coming from a meme sewn into all of Stone’s work, which is the fact that at least one of her subjects is always carrying a fish. An all to common occurrence in this part of the world.

She is current chair and exhibiting member of the 62 Group of Textile Artists and Fellow of the Society of Designer Craftsmen. Born in Grimsby, Sue Stone studied Fashion at St Martins School of Art and then Embroidery at Goldsmiths College in London. In her own words, Sue’s mixed media compositions allude to the passing of time by merging images from the past with those from the present. You can check out her blog and more work at Woman With A Fish.

A shoestring budget and a big vision. If these guys ever got a wedge of cash to play with, then the outcome may well be box office gold.

Yella Belly Films are the area’s master purveyors of high quality short films. Shot on a whopping budget of just £2500, their second outing was the multi award winning Grimsby RV, an epic plot in which an alien invasion of the UK culminates in the evacuation of the Prime Minister’s daughter, by special forces, from a rendezvous (RV) point you won’t see in the upcoming 20th Century Fox summer blockbuster Independence Day Resurgence: The Dock Tower!

It’s a genius idea, but don’t just take our word for it, here’s 15 minutes of film you won’t regret watching check it out here.

It also contains some great lines which we  particularly appreciate at The Straw That Broke The Haddock’s Back: The soldiers who are charged with saving the life of the PM’s offspring suggest that Grimsby may have looked much the same before the alien invasion. Cheeky! Here’s hoping the team at Yella Belly decide to get back in the saddle for a third short film, and perhaps start a studio franchise out of Grimsby… Bellywood anyone!?