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I live 250 metres from the glorious North Sea and beautiful Pakefield Beach.My working life was spent in education. Now I love walking, talking and writing. ‘Confessions of a Dutch Reading Club’ was my first novel (Patricia van Stratum 2011). This was followed by ‘Reading Pictures’, a collection of fictional short stories set in Lowestoft (2016) Now I’m into poetry. In January I began an online poetry course with The Writers’ Centre In Norwich. I have performed some of my pieces at The Seagull Theatre in Pakefield.  I am a member of Kirkley Village Writers, Pakefield  Planters and the Marina’s, Next Stagers Theatre Group. In all of these settings it is a great privilege to work with so many talented, creative and inspirational people. I frequently visit all three of our theatres and my regular treat is to go the Ferini Art Gallery in Pakefield. Here local artists can display their work in this wonderful coastal gallery. It’s a great setting for a number of activities as well as a quiet place to enjoy the skills and knowledge of its talented curator.

Much of my work stems from my background in working with plants and aims to highlight the natural patterns and shapes of plants and their individual details. Over several years I have been working on a series of black and white images of trees in the landscape using absence of colour to emphasize the shapes and their impact on their surroundings.

At the other end of the scale I have an ongoing project producing close up colour images of leaves to show the details and patterns within them and the way the colours separate between the vein systems.

www.larkimages.co.uk

My work is about objects, places and spaces. I make temporary interventions, often in public or shared spaces, and work across drawing, painting, sculpture and installation. I am interested in our environments; how we build, negotiate, use them; in what we put in them, and their messages. Readymade, mass-produced, commemorative; luxury, ephemera, trash, ordinary- rich and fascinating. Reimaging and subverting sensible objects can change their meanings and our assumptions. Pieces hover between built, un-built and grown. Appropriation of familiar, mundane materials and techniques into another context, allows us to see again the plain, the overlooked, the grotesque, the ordinary.

Laina has lived in Reydon, Nr. Southwold, for 10 years and has become increasingly absorbed in painting the surrounding area.  She has always loved painting and drawing and is continually looking at new techniques and mediums.

Her studio will be open to visitors on 22 & 23 June 2019 as part of Southwold Arts Festival’s Open Studio Trail.  She has work at the Ferini Gallery, Pakefield, and will be exhibiting at Beccles Society of Artists and Southwold Art Circle annual exhibitions.

Laina works mainly in oils and pastel, but also enjoys mixed media and watercolour.  She can be contacted via her website at www.lainawest.co.uk

I am self-taught in this wonderful world of Creative Art. I have always called it my apprenticeship for my retirement. I have been a Golf Green Keeper all my working life and have been in close contact with the four seasons. Watching all that Mother Nature can show you, it seemed natural for me to paint and draw wildlife.

www.johnrcarey.me.uk

Spadge Hopkins SOS committee member; WBA, NCAS and EAAF member is creating on a full time basis, informed by experience gained during a creative career that involved leadership, product design, the music industry and automotive engineering. Currently he tends to work in three dimensions and in metal.

His first mainstream public exhibition was in Ipswich in 2015 but he has been practicing and studying autodidactically, producing varied work for colleagues, friends and family since the 1980s.

Spadge’s first serious works were conceptual. The Machin(sic) series are made of found mechanical components in order to explore questions of value and are an expression of Spadge’s appreciation of the form and function of mechanical components that are so often unseen when they are performing their intended task.

His copper sculptures are variously figurative and explore two of the binaries of sculpture; volume and void; whilst playing with the use of light and shadow. Movement is a conscious theme in his natural history subjects whereas other pieces often concern mystery and the evocation of history.

A public art, rock-music themed commission for the City of Cambridge in 2016 and a continuing fascination with the subject, movement and shadow has led Spadge into producing a unique series of drawings of people laser cut in metal. These are lit in various ways and often move within the piece via small electric motors. Recently he has used the laser cutting technique to produce a series of animals some of which have been larger, outdoor sculptures.

Spadge has also curated a number of exhibitions. He lives and works in a rambling array of barns and sheds in Suffolk and has strong links with London, Cambridge and the West Country.

Sculpting in copper and steel at the moment. Natural history and iconic faces. Movement is often a theme either in the form itself or via electric motors. Natural light and shadow or projection and shadow often feature. Studio/gallery visits welcome by appointment.

SpadgeHopkins.co.uk

Facebook @SpadgeArt

I am an artist, researcher and educator. Trained in dance, my practice is informed by phenomenology, the lived body. Installation and theatrical sets/settings, costume, choreography, film, and photography are the end artefacts. Throughout the making, the body is the measure. I work both solo and collaboratively.

I am a sculptor working in a wide variety of materials.

PatrickElder.com

Kaaren Whitney is a Homeopath, Poet and Guardian of a Labyrinth and Tree Circle.

She gardens as time allows and creates seasonal rituals eight times a year.