Sally Pudney is a landscape painter working in an expressive realistic style. Her paintings focus on the landscapes, rivers, coast and estuaries of East Anglia, and the ancient trackways of Southern England. She works mainly in acrylic on board, often with added oil pastel.
During her early teaching career in Norfolk she painted landscapes in watercolour, but Sally began to paint seriously in acrylic in 2005. Since then she has exhibited in mixed exhibitions at the Haylett’s Gallery, the Geedon Gallery and at other exhibitions in Essex and Suffolk. Her work is also being exhibited now at the Buckenham Galleries in Southwold, and Church Street Gallery in Saffron Walden.
Her work has been short-listed for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. She holds regular Open Studio events at her home in Lexden.
“The focus of my interest in painting is light and colour. I love painting the huge East Anglian skies, the quiet lanes, the woodlands and the little boats around the estuaries of Essex and Suffolk. I try to capture the way light falls on the surface of water and mud, and the colours, shadows and movement of trees and fields against those vast skies.”
Sally has undertaken a number of painting projects in the last few years:
Twelve Months in an Essex Wood
Four Seasons on the Stour.
On the Edge: The North Sea Project
Twelve Months in an Essex Field
Essex Paths & Bridleways
Twelve Months on an Essex Island
In 2023 Sally worked on a Family History painting project. Her Pudney family have lived in North Essex since the earliest recorded mention of the name in 1379, and Sally has been visiting and painting the places where they lived. This is a two year project which continued into 2024. The book containing all the resulting paintings and the story of the family through six centuries will be available in the early part of 2025.
As well as continuing the Family History project in 2024 Sally spent the year experimenting with different media and surfaces, sizes, techniques and plein air painting out of doors. She is now regularly painting in soft pastel, and mixed media as well as acrylic.
Sally’s painting project for 2025 is Twelve Months on an Essex Country Estate. See the 2025 blog posts for all the details.
“I love to be outside in the natural world and I hope my paintings convey something of this life-enhancing pleasure to the viewer.”
Since 2012 Sally has organised (along with Graham Bell) annual Arts Festivals showing work by invited professional artists and makers each year. In 2019 they launched a new venture, the Anglian Arts Project. The first exhibition, featuring eight professional artists, was at the The Sentinel Gallery, and since then there have been regular exhibitions. For the past three years there have been two shows each year. See the Anglian Arts page for details of upcoming exhibitions for 2025.