The Arts Club Aldeburgh Beach Members’ Page

In November 2021, Laurence installed a 26-foot-high sculpture, alongside the A12 highway in Suffolk, called ‘Yoxman’. This colossal figure embodies his fascination between the human figure and the environment; he is part tree, cove, cliff and figure. Organic matter is built into the casting process; a detritus of leaves, branches, stone and rope. The patina and colouring of the sculpture will, in time, reflect the nearby cliffs. Drawing together the movement of time from the ancient past through the present and looking towards the future.

One of the few sculptors who casts his own work, Laurence is fascinated by human anatomy and the metamorphosis of form and matter that governs the lost-wax process. The driving force behind his work is bronze, an alloy that physically and metaphorically illustrates entropy, the natural tendency of any system in time to tend towards disorder and chaos. His sculptures express the raw liquid power of bronze, its versatility, mass and evolution, and the variety of process marks he retains tell the story of how and why each work came to be.

Ian trained in Fabric design and printing at Swansea College of Art. After a spell teaching art at secondary level in the Midlands he moved to East Anglia where he set up a studio designing and hand printing furnishing fabrics. This led to  a career in Interior design creating and project managing hotel and restaurant interiors throughout Europe and Scandinavia. 

A poet since a young age Ian's first collection “ Conversations With Birds” was published by  Eye Wild Books. He became chairman of the Suffolk Poetry Society during its transition to charity status and held many National Poetry day  events at the lookout as well as performing his work throughout the UK and overseas. In 2017 he received an arts council grant to  make a performance tour in New York State USA together with reading at the Walt Whitman Birthplace Long Island and has forged poetry connections overseas notably with the poet George Wallace. Together with his own work he gives illustrated talks throughout East Anglia on the work of his compatriot the  poet Dylan Thomas Entitled “ Singing in My Chains”.

Ian considers himself a multi faceted artist in the widest sense pursuing  his talents and involvement in the arts in whichever way  it takes him as designer, sculptor, poet and performer. Currently he models for life drawing groups throughout the county as well as assisting his wife Carol Lawrence in the publication of poetry collections. A firm believer in the bringing together of the arts his current project is a fusion of his poem “Lines in the Sand” with dance and music.

Through membership of the lookout arts club he has been delighted  to be part of the  enormous creativity of the region and meet all manner of fellow artists.

Pippa Graber is a Suffolk and London based gallerist and art dealer. She created her company ArtDog in 2000. She owns, runs and curates  artdog gallery in southeast London.  ArtDog participates in art fairs in London and internationally. The artists that exhibit are mainly women artists from the UK.

Her main emphasis is on contemporary abstract painting and photo-realism.  Pippa also does free art outreach to local primary schools.  The gallery has regular exhibitions and music events. 

Pippa has lived in southeast London since 1990 and lives part time in Easton,  Suffolk.  

Paul began his career in music as a drummer, playing with the likes of Scottish rock icon ALEX HARVEY and seminal new wave band MAGAZINE.

Several years producing music videos in the UK and US followed and found him working with artists like SADE, PETE TOWNSEND, THE KINKS, THE ROLLING STONES, U2, NIRVANA, and DAVID BOWIE whose video won the Grammy for best short form music film.

Later, he created the oral history film archive for the Experience Music Project in Seattle before  returning to the UK to direct and produce documentaries on SOLOMON BURKE and BOBBY BLAND for the BBC.

In 2008, he founded the Maverick Festival, the

first festival in the UK to focus on what was then alt.country and is now

widely known as Americana.

Now in its seventeenth year, the festival has hosted many of the most acclaimed artists in the genre but is most recognised for its mission to discover and present new and emerging artists

Danielle Swanson is an Antique Dealer and Interior Designer with an eclectic and intriguing Emporium selling Antiques, paintings, rugs, garden furniture, vintage textiles, lighting, custom-made lampshades and much more. Situated on the High Street in the medieval village of Debenham, Danielle’s shop Swan House and Garden is diagonally across from the newly re-opened Debenham Lion, a 15th Century pub now serving delicious food, so well worth an afternoon outing! .Instagram: Swan Maison et Jardin

Sophie Crockett (b.1969) was returned from a sea-going childhood to a rural life and a village school in Suffolk. Adventuring in the nearby verges and lanes of Cretingham, she grew up around animals and nature and the last of old Suffolk traditions and farm life. A yearning for the simple ties of a rural existence and the stories and legends of human history have driven so much of her creative output.

“Fairy tales read, an obsession with horses, cycling barefoot, paraffin stoves in the bathroom, grabbing at eels in streams, dirt floors at the old lady’s cottage. Magic and tradition. Legend and storytelling. Horses, horses, horses. All this.”

Sophie is a self-taught oil painter and has a studio near Aldeburgh in Suffolk.

Susan’s drive towards creativity began as a child playing with dangerous tools in her great grandfather’s shed. As a shipwright and builder of Thames barges, he delighted in her curiosity and encouraged learning, risk and patience.

In later years Susan’s interest and participation in the arts - as a painter, a pianist, a writer, a photographer - played a significant but supportive role in her career in organisational change consultancy. Then in 2020, the world shifted and she decided to explore the limitations and opportunities that began to emerge. Working with tutors and mentors globally she painted, discovered, and pushed her practice. In 2021 she built a studio and the work became expansive. As the world opened up she traveled to see original art, she read, discussed, gained gallery representation, and drew on her psychology background to go beyond technique and examine the mindset that supports the fertile artist.

Susan’s practice continues to develop. She has recently been working with a member of the New English Art Club to push her into new concepts and ways of mark-making. Her references include De Stael, Diebenkorn, Morandi and Nicholson. She works primarily in acrylic and oil and her focus currently is on painting misshapen pots and empty landscape.

Hilary graduated with an Art Diploma from Anteros Arts Foundation in Norwich and has since studied at Newlyn School of Art.

She works from her own studio in Holton, near Halesworth in Suffolk, mainly painting portraits, still life subjects and landscapes in oils and pastels. She has recently been developing her abstract practice with mixed media.

Whatever the subject or medium, Hilary uses bold brushstrokes with thick paint and an enhanced colour palette to create an expressive painting in what has become her signature style.

Hilary exhibits and sells her work in a number of galleries across East Anglia. She is a member of Suffolk Open Studios and will be opening her studio in June.

Melissa Pierce Murray has shown work extensively across the UK and Internationally including: Artwalk Wakefield / Index Festival / Yorkshire Sculpture International, Wakefield, 2022; The Hostry, Norwich and University College, Oxford, 2019-20. She was also invited as a keynote speaker for Mestizajes International Conference on Art, Literature and Science, Spain, 2021. Melissa holds a BA (English Literature, Physics, University of Colorado) and MA Fine Arts (Norwich University of the Arts, U.K).

James is a landscape artist and portrait painter. He has no studio always painting on site. As Trevor Felsey writes: with James you know the artist was there. Two years ago he moved from London to Suffolk where he quickly had a solo exhibition at the Ballroom Arts. This year he will paint locally and in Spain.

James was born in Oban, Scotland. He studied at the Byam Shaw School of Art, in London where he was awarded the Leverhulme Scholarship. His main influences were his tutors: Patrick Simons RA, and the acclaimed Trevor Felsey, who remains a friend and influence to this day. On leaving the Byam Shaw the Royal Academy invited him to be part of a Young British Contemporaries exhibition.

For many years, after completing an interior design degree, James made a successful living with clients such as: BP, the Chairman of OPEC and the celebrity Katie Price. He also worked as an illustrator for Oxford and Cambridge press. Margaret Thatcher engaged James to organise the exhibition for 400th Anniversary of the Royal Mint at Somerset House.

Artist Rebecca Styles was born in West Yorkshire and currently works from her studio in the Outer Hebrides on the West Coast of Scotland. She is a recipient of a Visual Artist and Craft Makers (VACMA) Award, and a Creative Scotland Artist Bursary for her work involving local raw pigments and traditional paint making. She studied at Bradford College of Art, and later Somerset College of Art &Technology and Falmouth College of Art.

Landscape, and the emotive power of ‘place’, is at the heart of Rebecca’s practice, and her exhibitions stem from extended projects related to place. Using natural materials she explores a deeper connection to ancient locations in her work, with an emphasis on creating landscape with landscape – using earth pigments, grit, charcoal and other found materials with her oil paints. She has spent recent years exploring some of the UKs most beautiful locations, collecting foraged materials for use in her paintings and creating a series of works for exhibition, including her first Hebridean collection, Bigger Than Us, shown at Grinneabhat Gallery, North Bragar in spring 2022, followed by Alchemy, an exhibition of paint, poetry and place in collaboration with writer Heather Young, shown at Baile na Cille Church on the Isle of Lewis, and her winter 2022/23 project Finding Lewis at Talla Na Mara Arts Centre on the Isle of Harris.

Rebecca is focused on developing her work through a series of plans and residencies based on engaging with new and diverse landscapes. Beginning with a studio move from Scotland’s Outer Hebrides to the rural mountains of Wales this summer, she then takes up a two-week residency at Brisons Veor, Cornwall where she will explore, in contrast to Scotland’s Western Isles, the softer but still wild landscape of Britain’s South West edge, followed in November with a residency at Casa Tagumerche in La Gomera, Canary Islands, at a community art venue 400 meters above sea level with magnificent, unobstructed views of the Atlantic Ocean.

Jane’s training in textiles and as an interior designer has been a constant influence in her life and art practice. Her desire to maximise texture in her work led to the inclusion of collage in 2018. The accidental and serendipitous connections that random pieces of paper make during collage work can result in some exciting and innovative work and became the signature of her earlier work.

Jane has used collage to teach online art courses to adults and family groups. These inclusive workshops used the tool of collage to stimulate imagination and intuition, boost self-esteem and creativity. The workshops can now be attended in person and can be booked on this website (for more details and to book go to Courses).

“Collage is such a brilliant way to get started on a creative habit or just for bringing balance back into your busy life. It frees you up, encourages you to play (which ignites your imagination) and gets you experimenting (a great skill for growing your problem-solving brain). Collage opens the conscious mind to insights and new ways of looking at life. It helps me quit my overthinking mind and choose imagery from my heart.”

Daily sketchbook work will often see the inclusion of collage in her prep work for larger pieces and continues to appear within bigger work too. Today Jane’s work is abstract in style and draws inspiration from the Suffolk countryside where she lives and the places she has travelled to, including Zambia, Ibiza and Morocco.

Theronda Hoffman studied at the Spier Art School at Stellenbosch, South Africa.She did a graphic course at the Strydom Art Gallery in George South Africa. She is also the founder of Kesgrave Arts Studio, where she is the Artist in residence. Her work is taking a line for a walk in her Suffolk landscapes or to paint it with realistic abstraction in colours.

Her motto “ I live to paint and paint to live”

Alongside the Spring Show, in the Lookout, Alexandra Helm presents EXTENDED REALITY an exhibition of her paintings and prints which explore links between memory, dream and observation.

My work investigates creative navigational tools exploring a terrain between art and ecology. I feel called to connect threads of craft traditions, foraging, intuitive dialogue, and the recorded resources history and time left for me to study, holding the question:Could art be an open-ended multidimensional cross- disciplinary enquiry into what it means to live meaningfully as a human being in the anthropocene?

Hanna Varga is a Hungarian-born professional artist and creative mentor based in Suffolk. In her art practice she nurtures her interconnected relationship with nature by reframing traditional notions of craftsmanship and its ever-evolving much debated relationship to art. Hanna trained as a sculptor in Hungary over 10 years ago specialising in the traditional lost-wax bronze casting technique. She is best known for her bronze leaf sculptures. She co-founded Ashleaf in London in 2015, dedicated to preserving leaves in bronze. Her work was featured in various exhibitions throughout the UK and internationally. More recently, she has been working as a facilitator of nature walks and creative group workshops both in urban and rural environments. She started a podcast in 2019 to record inspiring conversations with other creative practitioners called Dialogues with Nature which later served as a catalyst for founding the Dialogues with Nature Network, an experimental international community of naturalists.

Her current focus is natural cordage making using wild growing plant fibres she forages on her walks. She is currently developing a new collaborative project, The Foraged Rope on the Suffolk Coast. The envisioned result of which will be a rope of over 15000 meters made by hand, literally, intertwining wild plants and dialogues from this particular geographical stretch of space: where sea meets land.

Hi! I am delighted to be joining the Aldeburgh Arts Club. I was connected with Caroline through my friends Perienne Christian and SOPHIE. I am a local author, performer and speaker who galvanises women to take ownership of who they are and unapologetically show up as their authentic selves, by tapping into their desires, using voice and energy to activate an inner strength that's hidden deep within.

I am seeking deep conversations and exchanges with like-minded artists. I am seeking to ‘get on the road’ my One Woman Show adapted from my debut book from September onwards and I see this club as a wonderful opportunity to explore how we can help each other expand our artistic endeavours. I look forward to meeting you at an event soon.

Sophie Léone resigned from Suffolk Police in October 2020 after 15 years exploring the depths of human behaviour as a detective. Following a near death experience, she transitioned from patriarchal to goddess realms as a pregnancy and rest guide. In the time of detachment from the busyness of the ‘system’, she conducted her most intimate, complex and major investigation, excavating ancient clues to heal her ‘classified’ demons. She called in guides to sift through material, clarified fact from fiction and basked in liminal spaces, her pen recording her observations throughout.

She self-published her first book “The Book of Revelations” in Sept 2021, adapted and performed it on the stage as a one woman show in Feb 2022. Her voice and writings have featured on her podcasts, the BBC and as a radio presenter on wellness platforms.

Caroline lives most of the time in Suffolk and has been coming to the area since 1964. Caroline trained with the painter Nahem Shoa who has work in many major museums in England. She was taught the Carlos Duran method which is based on the teaching of the great 17th Century master Diego Velazquez, it is way of painting from life which concentrates on seeing the shape, tone and colour as a whole and painting all parts equally.

Her special interest is the skies and landscapes around Bawdsey and the devastating effects of erosion along the coastline. She spends much of her time painting directly from nature en plein air, relentlessly returning to the subject many times whenever the weather and tides allow so some of her paintings may take several months to complete. Constable is one of Caroline’s greatest inspirations.

She has exhibited with the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, the Pastel Society and the Ruth Borchard national self portrait prize. She has had work at Snape gallery and is represented by Gallery East in Woodbridge. Caroline’s work has been included in museum shows in Coventry and Hartlepool alongside Freud, Bomberg, Auerbach and her recent work “Fallen Pines” is now part of the permanent collection and can be seen in the current show “Landscape Rebels” at Christchuch Mansion Museum in Ipswich. She has work in many private collections here and abroad.

Inspired by the Suffolk countryside and travels further afield, in particular the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, Caroline is drawn to the dramatic lines and strong shapes formed by shifts in light in the landscape. It is this play of light that inspires her to paint. Her work acts as a visual diary, in particular of walks taken. Smaller works in mixed media are formed and they, along with memories, are developed into larger works, mainly in oil on canvas, enabling her to explore further colour, shape, texture and abstraction.

She is a member of Southwold Art Circle, Suffolk Open Studios and UK artists. Twice shortlisted for the Sir John Hurt Art Prize.

A self taught Artist focusing on creating work with fine detail. Drawing with pen, painting with ink and inspired by nature, Astra creates realism art depicting the beauty of animals with a colourful twist. The splash of colour Astra adds to her work has become a signature style and is easily recognisable alongside her classical monochrome drawings.

A passionate explorer and a lover of nature Astra loves to travel off the beaten track, there is nothing she enjoys more than to embark on an adventure. Astra has hiked in numerous far flung places and cannot wait to be able to tick off more trails from her list of hiking dreams. So far these have included the base camp of Mount Everest, numerous mountains in China, The Tiger Leaping Gorge, 1800 miles across the USA on the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada, summiting Mount Whitney, Half Dome and numerous other mini adventures along the way.

SOPHIE Mistress of Art, is a confessional artist, through Performance and conceptual art SOPHIE presents to the world her world which is your world too. Valuing all of which we have come to undervalue. The humble spatula, the dutiful tea towel, the supportive rolling pin and the woman’s Menstrual Cycle. Through deep inner inquiry SOPHIE has come to see she is THE GOD of her own Universe-city. SOPHIE challenges the landscape of what has come to be expected as societal norms, health norms and educational norms. SOPHIE is integral in her choices, SOPHIE’s life is the art.

My art is about inspiring the human race. Women, mothers and menstruation have been undervalued not only by society but also by our own complicity. We and it [menstruation] has not received the respect it deserves. I want to represent the power of the woman’s menstrual cycle before it becomes a myth.”

Miche Fabre Lewin and Flora Gathorne-Hardy have been collaborating for 15 years, working between UK and Southern Africa to explore the profound interconnections between our humanity and the sacred whole of sentient Earth. Their body of work includes co-creating mixed-media artworks and installations, hosting convivial happenings and contemporary rituals, and curating experimental exhibitions. Sympoiethics is the term Miche has evolved to describe this orientation towards evoking and enlivening the intimate relationships between our bodies and the matter and processes of life. In biology sympoiesis defines the interconnected nature of ecosystems which come into being through entanglement, coproduction and cooperation. Ethics derives from ethos which means a dwelling place where people come to know and create together. Thus, the sympoiethic approach of Studio Fabre Hardy recovers art-making as the ground for practising an ethics of care in the everyday – an approach which respects the integrity of each other, the sentient matter of our Earth and the habitats we dwell within.

Miche Fabre Lewin

Art offers me a space for recognising the embodied, ancestral and archetypal experience of living a human life on Earth. Through artmaking, I am in a daily and continuous enquiry and experimentation with my consciousness, my psyche, and the purpose of my own selfhood. What has been forgotten, neglected, erased? Art has its Sanskrit origins in ‘Rta’, the dynamic flow of the living continuum of relationships and shapes my part in humanity’s interplay within the becomingness of the world. To make art enhances my dwelling on this beautiful, abundant planet enabling me to inhabit a sympoiethical existence and experience the sacred in the everyday. 

Flora Gathorne-Hardy

My life and art evolve within geographies of connection. For me, making art is fundamentally an experience of responding with the intelligences and energies of people, other sentient beings and those of the land with its layered memories. These experiences come through my mind, hands, dreams, sounds, sensations, conversations, all expressed as a movement of co-making and co-thinking through drawing, writing, performance, map-making and pilgrimages. Art is a way of being that allows me to become more fully present to life as an interconnected whole, enhancing my ability to interact in ways that add to the diversity of expression and habitat.

Greetings Aldeburgh Arts Club, I am Sara Sayer a painter and illustrator living in Walpole near Halesworth. I arrived in Suffolk with my family in June 2021 and I’m excited to get to know more of the local arts scene and personalities through this club.

In my paintings, using nature as my muse, I explore the balance and fascinating tension between abstraction and reality. Focussing on universal touchpoints of natural perfection, I seek to find meaning and solace away from the hubbub of contemporary life. My artwork forms my prayer and meditation on the magical consolation of nature.

I grew up in Woodbridge but went away and lived a medical life for many years in London. In 2019 I moved to Aldeburgh and now divide my time between Aldeburgh and London. My photographic career started as a way of recording life. Only after joining the MA Photographic Studies course at Westminster, did I really learn what image making could do and discover its potential for expression and communication.

My work is rooted in landscape and ‘place’ which affords a wealth of metaphorical material. I also make photobooks which are concerned with the narratives of life and emotion. My first book ‘Here is all I want to be’, published in 2017, was about the solace to be found in nature. Last year I published my second book. ‘A Restless Land’, a melancholy collection concerned with the undertones of Covid through images of dusk and night. It was shortlisted for the Charcoal Book Publishing prize and is currently on sale in The Photographers Gallery in London.

Dominic began his photographic career in London in the late 1980’s, working in professional darkrooms alongside assisting other photographers and shooting his own freelance commissions. In 2008 he founded his own professional practice, specialising in reportage wedding photography, going on to win 5 WPJA awards for his work. He is also a long standing judge on the Wedding Industry Awards photography panel. His personal work has been exhibited in the UK and appears in two monographs.

Dominic has an interest in psychogeography and is currently working on a project about Aldeburgh with the working title ‘I count only bright hours’ whilst completing a MA in Photography with Falmouth University.

Ruth’s work has always been intuitive, lyrical and expressive. Moved by colour and form, music and movement, and finely tuned to the ‘internal landscapes’ that affect our daily lives, her watercolours, oils, and more recently, collaged hand painted tissues, are only discovered as she makes them.

Untaught, Ruth prefers to operate from what, in terms of knowledge, is practically a blank canvas. Unaware of ‘rules’ her process is spontaneous and experimental. Each piece is approached as an exploration. An ongoing questioning dialogue gradually arrives at a composition that after much back and forth exchange, becomes recognisable to her as ‘finished’. Only in the latter stages is she conscious of the work's identity.

Over 25 years of practice Ruth has moved further into abstraction, enjoying the infinity of narratives it offers. ‘What is it about?’ the question so often posed to the artist, is exactly the right question. What indeed. Jacky Bowring in ‘Melancholy and the landscape’ writes ‘Abstract art … provides a challenge for the viewer to look within themselves…’

My name is Fanny Jacob and I'm a textile artist living and working in rural Suffolk. Born in London, I initially trained as a State Registered Nurse at St Bartholomew's Hospital before moving to the London College of Fashion where I studied pattern cutting and knitwear design.

I now enjoy working from my studio on the beautiful Wilford Peninsula on the Suffolk Coast, designing and creating unique pieces to wear and for the home.

I am also a Creative Arts Coordinator in a Suffolk prison, encouraging residents to get involved in a wide range of creative arts.

Sue has an MA in Writing Poetry from Newcastle University with the Poetry School London. She is Secretary of Suffolk Poetry Society, organises poetry events and reads her own poetry regularly in venues around Suffolk. She enjoys attending major poetry festivals such as StAnza, Ledbury and Poetry in Aldeburgh as well as the Festival of Suffolk Poetry.

Sue was shortlisted for the Plough Prize 2021, commended in the Crabbe Poetry Competition 2021 and shortlisted for the Maytree Press Three Trees Portfolio Award. She has had poems published by London Grip, ARTEMISpoetry, Brittle Star, Dempsey and Windle, Ink Sweat and Tears, Poetry Space, Fenland Poetry Journal, The French Literary Review and in various magazines and local anthologies.

Sue observes and reflects, captures moments in both her own life and the lives of others, painting pictures with her words. She has a particular interest in ekphrasis.

Helen was part of this year’s, 2021, festival with a recording for the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence and A Poet for Every Day of the Year.

Helen's pictures follow her from The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, where formidable Maggi Hambling was one of her tutors, through her career in entertainment, best known as Mrs Miggins in “Blackadder III” to the landscape that she loves here in Suffolk.

Originally from London, Nick lives in Woodbridge and has been involved in the Suffolk music and arts scene for many years.

He is a recently retired solicitor, but as a lieder/opera singer, he has given three recitals at St Mary’s Church Woodbridge, has performed at Aldeburgh’s Jubilee Hall and Burgh House in Hampstead as well as participating in a master class at the Oxford Lieder Festival.

Originally from Woodbridge, Jamila is a History of Art student at the University of Leeds, though she is currently living and working in London at a gallery as part of her degree program.

Jamila is particularly interested in 20th c. British painting and 19th century French, Russian, and Danish painting.

In her year out of university, she is undertaking a course at The Courtauld in London, and she hopes to pursue her interest in art dealing and curation when she finishes her studies.

Prior to moving to Suffolk, Xenia lived in Bavaria, Germany. Having attended a small film school in Bristol, she graduated in 2020 with a degree in Filmmaking.

With a keen interest in 35mm photography and documentary, she is currently focusing on refining her skills through collaboration and experimentation.

Her main aspiration is to keep learning!