New Year – New Plans

Firstly, may I wish you all a happy and healthy new year!

Well, my 2022 painting project is almost done. I just need to finish the very last painting, and then I can start putting the Twelve Months on an Essex Island  book together.

I have some exciting plans for the coming year, which I hope you will enjoy sharing as the year goes on.

My BIG project is a painting AND writing one. As some of you may know I have traced my Pudney family history, and it’s ‘off-shoots’ back to the early 1700s, and prior to that, fairly certainly back to Tudor times. They have all lived in North Essex, mostly in a twenty mile radius of Colchester, in many different villages. I intend to paint all these different places, choosing a representative view of each, and put the images of the paintings with the stories of all the people together into a book. I’m sure this will take more than a year! This is probably a two year project, and will involve a lot of research, maps and exploring!

Alongside this, I am going to do a painting project on Rural Buildings . I rarely paint buildings, so I am keen to get better at them. This will focus on barns, mills, farmhouses, pubs, maybe some churches, too. Some of these pictures will be in soft pastel.

We also have three Anglian Arts Project exhibitions planned for 2023. In May we will be at the Craft House, Woodbridge, from 24-30 May; at Little Bentley Church Hall again from 16-18 June; and at the Sentinel Gallery Wivenhoe again from 12-17 September.

There is a possibility that I may be involved in another exhibition in July as well,  and I will be having my usual Christmas Open Studios in November. I also have work exhibited at the Buckenham Galleries in Southwold all the time, and have been approached recently by another gallery wishing to show my work – more news on that when I’ve been to visit them.

Lots to look forward to! 😄