Creatively connecting people with place along the Norfolk/Suffolk border
My work is about is about the textures and mood of the landscape around me – focusing sometimes on the details of vegetation and sometimes on evoking a sense of the season, of space, light and weather.
I draw and use digital photography, almost always in combination with experimental textile and mixed media approaches.
I work in series – responding to particular places, often the beautiful Waveney Valley landscape local to me, and exploring the possibilities of new techniques.
I try to communicate a sense of atmosphere by capturing the motion of the sea, the tranquility of the land, and the texture of the rocks.
I let my work develop and take over from my initial direct reaction.
The elements of the environment are not only beautiful, calm but vast, complex and dangerous. This relationship between fear and tranquility are emotions I can identify with.
Engaging with nature has helped me to overcome my recent surgery to remove a brain tumour. I admire and appreciate more so now the beauty found in an individual leaf or a spectacular view.
A mixed media and natural resources artist creating a selection of contact botanical prints and paintings using the plants gathered from around Suffolk.
The art work is a calm and gentle visual experience that allows the natural marks and colours from nature to connect you to the natural world.
Finding sanctuary in nature and seeking deeper connections with the landscape, I have immersed myself in researching and discovering the potential of natural colours and prints from my environment. Following a path that led to completing an MA at NUA I have continued to work exploring my locality through mindful practice.
Each print or painting is a result of a unique process, from gathering materials on long walks, to preparing the fabrics, dye baths and paints. Embracing the serendipity of creating this way allows for the materials to become their own part of the collaboration. I am able to guide the process but ultimately the outcomes are unknown until they are revealed. Each leaf, fabric or colour used has a journey attached to it, to create with these natural resources adds a deeper connection to the art.
Making my own paint brushes and paints, or using some recycled fabrics, feels different to painting with shop bought brushes and canvases. Seeking the beauty in natural resources and awakening ancient practices in our contemporary world is the way I feel drawn to express my art and my love for nature.
I am a Suffolk based artist working in architectural stained glass: light and colour are my medium.
Most of my work is commission based for secular and non-secular buildings. In some commissions, in agreement with the client, I enjoy taking an experimental approach to painting on glass, allowing for an element of surprise and discovery.
I also offer stained glass courses at my studio – Myglassroom in Mellis. There is a personal element running through my work, that is not commission based, in which themes of environment are explored and completed pieces can be displayed in numerous ways and places.
World Land Trust (WLT) is an international conservation charity that protects the world’s most biologically significant and threatened habitats acre by acre. Through a network of partner organisations around the world, WLT funds the creation of reserves and provides permanent protection for habitats and wildlife. Partnerships are developed with established and highly respected local organisations who engage support and commitment among the local community.
We support learning and the acquisition of useful skills and encourage social participation by people of different ages and backgrounds by inviting them to talks and exhibitions. We welcome volunteers, encouraging them to make use of their talents to enhance both our joint experience and their own.
We are based at the Old School, Grove Road, Brockdish and are grateful to the Diocese of Norwich, the owners, who have allowed us to continue the tradition of learning and self-advancement envisaged by the founders of the school in 1845.
Our trustees and helpers are all volunteers
I watch snow fall
so small it is no
more than dust
and when it touches
is barely felt
scattering
on blades of grass
it melts and disappears
The beginning of February marks the ‘turning of the light’, the point in the calendar when warmth begins to return to the earth. The land is still sleeping, seeds of new life buried under a barren landscape. We are at the half way point between winter solstice and spring equinox, a date celebrated in the Celtic calendar as Imbolc and in the Christian calendar as Candlemas. It is a day when we celebrate new life waiting to return.
I take advantage of a still frosty day and walk up to the wood. A mauve smoke of blackthorn curves along the ditch and the treelines are bones against the sky. I have been thinking about sound and our experience of it. In winter, wildlife sounds carry through the cold air. The woodland acts as an amplifier, seeming to bounce and echo noise within. Bird calls are crisp and bright, matching the weather. Sound recordist, Geoff Sample, in a talk to Waveney & Blyth Arts, told us that after the winter solstice the increasing light triggers bird song and that the great tit is often the first bird to sing.
The garden may be bleak, the grass crossed by frost blackened paths, the earth puddled down and lifeless, last year’s plants lying like brown shadows across the borders, but there are beacons of hope. By the front door yellow globes of aconites shine with snowdrops, Candlemas Bells.
small points of white light
shine beneath the hornbeam
like stars at night-time
In these dark days we might look to the skies for hope. Pin pricks of light shine in the night-time sky. The stars hold stories that go back to the earliest days of man. The Seven Sisters, the cluster of stars known as The Pleiades, feature in prehistoric cave paintings. Without the glare of human lights, which can be seen from space illuminating the globe, the night sky must have offered a deeply mystical and fascinating spectacle. Even now, if we can find a horizon away from artificial light we gaze in awe at the worlds spinning light years away from us.
How much we can see is calculated every year by the Countryside Charity, CPRE, whose star count maps record the stars seen within the constellation of Orion. Between 6 and 14 February 2021 look south into the night sky, find the Orion constellation with its four corners and ‘belt’ of three bright stars, then count the number of stars you can see within the rectangle formed by the four corner stars.
More info and sign up here
The stars offer our creative minds an opportunity for poetry, song, photography and artwork. And that feeling of awe when we gaze at the night sky can help with our happiness and well-being.
I am a Suffolk based artist inspired by low roofed black barns, peeling boats, mud and reed beds.
I paint primarily in acrylic and watercolour and take an an abstract approach to landscape and still life.
A career in organisational change taught me a lot about balancing chaos with order. Now enjoying how that plays out on the canvas.
A bespoke etching studio in a farm setting in Middleton for one to one tuition or sole use of the etching press.
Membership available for open access to printmaking facilities.
Mill Street Etching Studio
Rose Farm Barn, Mill Street, Middleton
Saxmundham
Suffolk
IP17 3NG
I’m a potter & artist.
I work with porcelain & sculpture crank clay, hand build & using my love of painting, I create bugs ( insects) hares, owls, wildlife in nature, adding my own interpretation & with my love of the countryside, coastal & garden where I live, in Lowestoft, which gives me my inspiration.
If you wish to commission a piece of work please contact via my Facebook or Instagram.
I’m also a member of Anglian Potters & Lowestoft Arts Centre where I also exhibit my work. I hope to be able to open my studio to visitors when we can safely do so, corvid restrictions are lifted.
