Music, remote, wild places are at the heart of Ruth’s creativity. Working in oils, watercolour, and collage, Ruth welcomes visitors to her studio in Wenhaston, by arrangement, and during Suffolk open studios in June.
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Hilary Barry
I use images of the many places I have visited and lived, Suffolk being recent and current.
The fascination of this landscape of marshes, muddy estuaries and beaches of pebble,
grasses and shingle, provides an endless source of inspiration.
With the right atmospherics, anything and everything can reflect a powerful beauty – from a sunset or a mountain, coastlines, fields and islands, to a moody thunderstorm at sea.
My recent paintings are very much about a sense of place and weather, and painterly
concerns such as texture, colour, shape and surface. I have not attempted accurately to
record or recreate, but to evoke the landscape of the real, remembered and imagined.
While the experiences are autobiographical, the images I make are carefully mediated
memories of the many and varied landscapes through which my life has passed.
These paintings of unpopulated places have an emotional charge. As an artist I choose and
edit the scenes, setting the stage for viewers to bring their imagination and private meaning
to these places, and wanting the painting to evolve its own life and meaning. Different
places in the landscape trigger memories of a shared past: the paintings are also enquiries
into unfamiliar spaces and attempt to create something unpredictable, beyond the subject.
Ivor Murrell
Ivor has been writing poetry now for about fifty years. Some of his poetry appears in webzines such as ‘Ink, Sweat and Tears’ and ‘Snakeskin’. He also posts and reads some of his poems on his website, www.versifier.co.uk.
Suffolk Artlink
Suffolk Artlink are a participatory arts charity. We develop and deliver inclusive arts programmes in communities that bring skills, support networks, confidence and joy to people in the East.
Our creative projects aim to help people transform their lives through the arts, and are delivered in places including community centres, hospitals and hospices, residential homes, refuges and schools.
Our work is led by experienced arts practitioners, encompassing a rich variety of art forms, and is delivered in close partnership with care, education, voluntary and community organisations.
Melinda Appleby
How does the landscape influence and inspire us? This is the core of my work – researching landscape history and culture, and crafting both prose and poetry to explore creative connections to nature and place. From a career in landscape management and environmental policy, my focus is now designed to encourage community writing in response to nature, and to connect people with their landscape memories.
I am available to commission as a writer or to run writing workshops. I am also interested in collaborative ventures which explore and celebrate landscapes and raise awareness of the need to take action to protect them.
I have been published in a number of landscape essay anthologies. Details of publications and some examples of my work on my website.
Find me at www.melindaappleby.co.uk
Seraphim
Seraphim is a talented ensemble of nine female singers, handpicked by director Vetta Wise and all experienced performers as soloists or as members of leading choirs and eminent groups throughout East Anglia.
Dedicated to exploring the glorious acoustics and visual inspiration of historic churches and buildings in Suffolk and beyond, Seraphim has established a remarkable reputation for the range, quality and commitment of every performance ever since its first concert in 2014. They have accepted invitations to perform abroad and in this country; and their innovative all-day “musical pilgrimages” of mini-concerts combined with enlightening talks from a knowledgeable speaker are enabling smaller, delightful spaces to become known to a wider audience. Whether singing a cappella or joining forces with outstanding local, national and international musicians – piano, harp, flute, organ and baroque ensemble have featured on their programmes to date – Seraphim’s original aspiration remains constant: to deliver “beautiful sounds in beautiful spaces”. Contact hello@seraphimvoices.uk.
Poppyland Publishing
Poppyland Publishing was established in 1976 to provide top quality local history books about East Anglia (Norfolk and Suffolk). Based in Oulton, Lowestoft, we are still one of the leading independent publishing houses in the region with over 150 titles to our name. Specialising in East Anglian history, we provide an outlet for new and established authors with a mission to contribute to the cultural heritage of the region.
Eileen Coxon
Informed by the Suffolk countryside around me, and the Hampshire landscape of my childhood, my work is about my experience of landscape and the feelings evoked.
Daily walks provide material; usually collected and/or recorded in drawings. Studio process and memory play a large part in the paintings, often resulting in a degree of abstraction. I am always searching for a duality of surprise and recognition, hoping to find that ‘something’ I didn’t quite know I was looking for.
Always drawn to the tangled complexities of nature, a specific hedge near my home has been the focus recently for detailed watercolours. I enjoy the close scrutiny of botanical detail that these require. Some of these works take the form of the Leporello. I feel that the unfolding nature of the
book mirrors the pace and rhythm of walking.
Roughcast Theatre Company
RoughCast is an East Anglian theatre company. We produce classic works of theatre for the love of it and tour them throughout Suffolk and Norfolk. We are based loosely around the Harleston area.
IBBAS
A principal aim of IBBAS is to raise awareness of Harry Becker’s work, a fine artist who lived and worked here in the Blyth Valley in the early years of the 20th century.
The society runs an exhibition each year in August, which, since 2019, has been in held the “Cathedral of the Marshes”: Holy Trinity Church, Blythburgh, Suffolk. The exhibition showcases over 100 contemporary artworks from East Anglian artists who find inspiration in Becker’s approach to his work. Each year new artists are added to our numbers, keeping the collection vibrant and exciting. Its a show with celebration at its heart, and Holy Trinity provides an additional layer of excitement to the Society’s goals, because it is where the Becker familia’s are buried; the favourite and much loved church of Becker’s daughter, and home to the tenor bell funded by Becker’s widow and daughter. We really feel at home in this light-filled, ancient space.
The ‘Paint-Out’ Competition which has become a regular part of the exhibition, grows in popularity each year, attracting artists whose speciality is painting ‘en plein air’. They certainly have a very beautiful landscape and building to use as their subject matter, and their work is places on display in the main exhibition.
We have recently incorporated an art workshop within the show, run by our Chair, the professional artist Annie Brundrit.
Throughout the year we run a programme of sketching groups at different sites across the county.
Please visit www.ibbas.co.uk for details of the exhibition, and of our other activities, and use our contact form on the Membership page for further details.
website: www.ibbas.co.uk
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