Cathy's Art Diary

Two glorious weekends at the Brighton Artists’ Open Houses looking at an array of art and craft work. The show was on longer but we only managed to do three days over two weekends however we went into full train spotter mode and got round 22 houses! We concentrated on the groups at Five Ways, Beyond the Level, Hove, and Dyke Road. It was a mix of old favourites such as the wonderful sculpture at Collectors’ Selection and Dion Salvador Lloyd’s lovely seascapes, although it was nice to see him branching out into delicate flower pictures.   New discoveries included St Augustine’s Rough Diamonds, not so much for the art but for the amazing things that had been done with the building. Random shout outs go to Claire Morris’s lovely garden sculptures, the eclectic 11 Rugby Road, Frances Doherty’s botanical ceramics and John Beetham’s paintings of archaeological sites and abstracted maps shown with wonderful ceramic heads by Alain Guy. Closed 26 May 2019

Eclectic open houses and artists’ studios in Brighton open for the duration of the Brighton Festival.   I spent two lovely weekends looking around this amazing collection of work. From paintings to ceramics to jewellery to sculpture to much, much more. The first weekend we concentrated on the Fiveways group and thanks to their excellent brochure managed to see nearly all the houses. Highlights include Dawn Thornhill’s papercut tableaux and Mr Craven : Raconteur’s wonderful series of Brighton men prints representing areas of the city. We also went to Francesca Grace McLeod’s preview party as we have bought from her in the past. I loved her new pictures based on photographs from her recent honeymoon. Thank you for the invitation. The second weekend was more random and more about finding parking then following a trail but we did make a point of going to the Collectors’ Selection to see Eve Shepherd’s recent small sculptures and to pop to Dion Salvator Lloyd’s to see his ...

Fascinating open weekend at the Phoenix Studios in Brighton. There are over 100 studios over 6 floors which gives a wonderful glimpse into different artists’ worlds. I love the fact that each room smells differently because of the variety of materials they use. We set the whole afternoon aside to go round and spent time chatting to artists we talked to last year and meeting new ones. There was a small exhibition on the ground floor highlighting the work of some of the artists under the theme of Present Tense.I liked Oliver Hain’s installation projecting a live feed of the traffic outside eon the floor also Kiki Stickl’s lines of pencil and silverpoint drawn directly onto the wall. Highlights of the studios themselves included Natalie Papamichael’s wonderful Caravaggio inspired paintings. It was fascinating to see two large pictures commissioned by a London club being worked on in the studio. We had a chat to Denise Felkin, who had changed the theme of her display to p...

Varied and eclectic Artists Open Houses in Brighton. I only managed to do one weekend of houses this year but packed them in! There was the usual wonderful mix of pictures, ceramics, jewellery, textiles, basically you name it it was there! I manage to contain my purchases to a croquet hoot necklace, some cards and a small oil painting of a seascape. A highlight was John Constable’s studio which I’d learnt earlier in the day was now lived in by an artist so it was great to see it. As ever I loved the basement in Brunswick Square which was packed with lots of tempting things. A thank you goes out to Francesa McLeod for the invitation to her private view and drinks. Francesca painted the portrait I use as my blog profile picture. She’d done some lovely new work and I particularly liked seeing her pictures based on a cage of stuffed birds alongside the real cage. Closed on 29 May 2017

Interesting trail of open houses and studios as part of the Brighton Festival around the Brunswick area of the city plus a couple of other favourite houses. Highlights included Francesca Mcleod’s portraits and nice to see some new landscape works by her. Also wonderful detailed drawings by Ian Hodgson in the Naked Eye Gallery including a wonderful picture of a glitter ball. We also popped into St John’s Church to see the new pictures by Annelies Clarke based on Revelations which were fantastic as ever. I bought a clock from her made from one of her artists palette. If I can’t afford a painting this is the ne4xt best thing! Closed 30 May 2016

Great trail of open houses and studios as part of the Brighton Festival around the village of Ditchling. As ever an excellent selection of arts and crafts in this village. There was an interesting show about typefaces at the Jointure Studio and wonderful jewellery at Pruden and Smith including work made from Roman glass. I bought greeting cards of Vanessa Worrall’s lovely seascapes. It was nice to meet the lovely dogs at Four Free again however the best house was the Handmade House on the outskirts of the village which had wonderful and much needed cakes as well as some interesting works including sculpture by David Price. Closed 30 May 2016  

Stunning open studios at Phoenix Brighton as part of the Brighton Festival. We went along thinking we’d be there about half an hour and staggered out three and a half hours later having seen some wonderful art and had some great conversations! Almost too many favourites to mention! We headed first for our friend Eve Shpeherd’s studio. She produces wonderful sculptures and it was great to see works in progress in the studio as we usually only see her finished works at her open house. We had a long chat about a classical head she was working on and about how it had been commissioned and how she hoped to develop it from its current neat classical form. I was delighted to find a photographer whose work I’d seen earlier in the week at the Sony World Photography Awards, Denise Felkin, whose current series of pictures looks at women who have not had children. I’ve attached a picture of her work to this post. They are lovely caring pictures. She was kind enough to give me a c...