SCORES of artists across the town and beyond are preparing to throw back the hatches of their studios and welcome in art lovers from far and wide.

Swindon Open Studios returns again for 2016 and will take place over the weekends of September 3 and 4 and again the following weekend

The event provides the chance for art lovers to catch a glimpse of the creative process and see what goes into creating a work of art.

Among some of the artists sharing their work will be Ruth Wintle at 11 Prospect Place, Christine Tipper at 122 White Edge Moor in Liden and Tase Woolf at 3 Askerton Close in Nine Elms.

Artist Olivia H Frost will also be one of a number of artists sharing her work at the Central Library in Regent Circus.

There she will be displaying a series of new abstract landscape paintings with ambiguous and charged surfaces that recreate familiar and atmospheric views of beautiful places including the Marlborough Downs.

Olivia graduated from The University of Reading with BA Hons Art in 2010. After studying MA Art History and Curating at Liverpool Hope University, she moved back home to Marlborough, where she was inspired by the beautiful Wiltshire countryside and shifted the focus of her art to gestural landscape painting.

“My work seeks to reinterpret the world around me and explore the relationship between the seen and the experienced,” she said.

Olivia's work will be on display in the library on both Saturdays between 10am and 4pm and 11am and 3pm on Sundays.

Other artists welcoming guests include Nicola Day at 123 Goddard Avenue, Molly Leslie at 23 Okus Road, David Bent at The Old Nursery on Marlborough Lane as well as Susan Carr and Terry Humphries at Studio 24 in Hlemsdale, Greenmeadown.

For a full list of artists taking part and a map of where to find them, pick up a copy of Swindon Open Studios’ brochure featuring an image of Lynette Thomas’s mosaic of a white horse. Copies can be found at the Swindon Advertiser’s offices on Victoria Road, or on the opposite side of the road in the Post Office. Copies can also be found nearby in the Museum and Art Gallery, the Beehive on Prospect Hill, The Hop Inn on Devizes Road, Earle's newsagents on Newport Street, the Central Library or in the recycling bins at 52 St. Margarets Road.