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.
Member Artists
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
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.
Bee Springwood
Bee is a visual artist focussing on environmental arts, from tiny collage to large outdoor installations.
Her materials are textile, drawing photography and found / natural materials. She also makes performances, combining visual, song/ sound, and movement based on life stories and loving attention to the natural world. She is member of Anam Cora vocal ensemble, who are based within Norfolk/ Suffolk, and Mosaic dance group.
She has exhibited the last few years at the WBA sculpture trails, and at Raveningham, and is also a member of Pomegranate artists group who have shared and shown work together since the late 1990s.
Mike Challis
Mike Challis is a freelance sound artist, maker and educator.
His SoundHides for Waveney Sculpture Trail 2015 and SPILL 2016 created a den in a straw hut playing recordings of sounds of nature from local habitats. He is working on a new SoundHide for Suffolk Wildlife Trust using recordings made at their Carlton Marshes Nature Reserve. This SoundHide will feature in the FirstLight Festival in Lowestoft in June.
His aeolian sculptures, Beech Cello and Microtonal Chimes, were exhibited at the Waveney Valley Sculpture Trail in 2018 and 2019.
2018 Mike ran Still Solos for SPILL 2018 and will be running listening walks at Snape Maltings during the Aldeburgh Festival and then throughout the summer, and in 2019, SoundHide Cinema.
Stephen Worrall
Sculptor, painter and photographer based on the Suffolk coast.
My painting tends towards abstraction, my sculpture tends to be large repurposing found objects.
My motivation is environment, colour and form.
Joy Wilson
Abstract artist living and working in Suffolk.
I am a Suffolk based artist I paint instinctively blending oils straight onto canvas my inspiration comes from the natural environment I enjoy making marks and the movement in my work, I have been described as a fearless painter a term I enjoy!
Nicky Stainton
I explore two themes through my paintings and drawings – the shapes and colours of the landscape around the Waveney Valley, often captured in winter when the bones of the landscape are more evident. And a more complex theme that addresses displacement, dispossession and loss. With these I incorporate fragments of old maps as a base for charcoal drawing and then encase them in encaustic wax. The half-hidden tracks and contour lines speak of places remembered and left behind, borders, barriers, the past and a network of life-lines etched onto the faces of these dispossessed people. I hope to create a connection between viewer and viewed, to stimulate a conversation, or at least internal reflection, about those who have been uprooted. I have been an active member of Harleston & Waveney Art Trail (HWAT) Collective since 2014.
I was Chair of W&BA for 9 years, until the 2019 AGM.
Rhonda Whitehead
Rhonda Whitehead
I record the details and nuances of the urban environment, everyday instances of decay, such as the gradual weathering of a building, in Rome, Venice and other cities in Europe.
Verity Newman
I am a multi-disciplinary artist based in Norwich, with a focus on painting, mixed media work on paper and sculpture.
My first degree was in Three-dimensional Design, where I specialized in Glass, and my MA looked at Arts in a Social Context, which explored the role of art in the public realm.
I exhibit regularly in the region and beyond, as well as teaching Art, Design & Crafts part-time.
My practice reflects three broad themes: the function/non-function of objects, fading memories of journeys through places and spaces, and the transience of our personal habitats/environments. The rituals and constructed narratives (or ‘imagined histories’) we create around all of these fascinate me, together with our need to attach and reinforce our (perhaps false) identities to specific objects and places.
As I originally trained as a sculptor, I love the physicality, context and provenance of materials. Employing materials to achieve balance, whilst conveying tension and energy – a dialogue between fragility and strength – is something I strive for. I lean towards historic and contemporary architectural forms, shapes, structures and silhouettes, often dismantling these to create evocative negative spaces.