Fascinated by the luminosity, colour and radiance of glass, architectural glass artist and sculptor Amber Hiscott draws on the natural world to visually explore ideas in her chosen medium of glass.

The foundation of her work lies in free form painting - her most used tools in her studio being a ‘multitude of different sized brushes’. She relishes the challenge presented by translating and recreating ideas into visual images and then creating new ways of working to express these images in glass.  This keeps her work fresh, stimulating, while respectful and mindful of the 1000 year traditions of stained glass window making.

An internationally recognised glass artist, Amber describes the most satisfying thing about being an artist as being able to express herself in a particular medium and knowing that medium so well that she can go at it with conviction and originality.

The Green Mountain Monastery commission - featured below - encapsulates this knowledge and understanding of glass and her desire to challenge both herself and the medium.

Deeply researched, her work is expressive of the four themes underlying the commission - The Primal Flaring Forth (the Big Bang), The Birth of the Stars, Earth and Life and The Future.

The first challenge was to find a way of visually expressing these concepts, so she returned to her roots - painting without constraint and then determining how to take these images into glass. The result is four stained glass windows that exude the exuberance, vitality and energy which she sees in the natural world - sympathetic to and enhancing the environment for which they were created.

Amber Hiscott has received many awards and accolades for her work - winning the Royal Society of Art in Architecture Award for her collaborative design work for the Centre for the Visual Arts, Cardiff: and awarded the Freedom of the City of London and the Freedom of The Worshipful Company of Glaziers for her contribution to to the medium of Architectural Glass in 1978. In 2006 she won the Wales Arts International award to exhibit, travel and work in Japan, having been shortlisted for the Jerwood Prize in 2003.

Her work can be found across the globe - with significant pieces in Vermont, USA - the Green Mountain Monastery, Sheffield, The Royal Exchange Theatre, The Wales Millenium Centre and Swansea City Centre and the Unilever headquarters in London.