Recent Events
Recent Events is mainly a record of our Thursday meetings.
We would like to hear if you enjoyed the meeting and we will publish your comments here alongside a brief description of the evening if you so wish.
Please send your comments to info@enynshamartsgroup.co.uk
Paul Ellis September 2025
Paul, who lives in Eynsham, gave a fascinating demonstration on how he creates a woodland scene of collage using mono-printed images. He began with a sketch he had made of the Rollright Stones.
From the sketch he produced a line drawing from which he could create shapes to cut out and individually create mono-printed images
Having accumulated 10 images in total they had to be glued to a backing. Unfortunately some ink was accidently transferred to the backing but Paul came up with a quick solution. Asking anybody in the audience for a coin he created a pale moon which sat cleverly over the blodge. And calm was restored to the scene.
This is the very polished final product, full of atmosphere.
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Judie Waldmann. June 26th 2025
Judie described how she changed from teaching to photography and the support and encouragement she received during those 5 years training.
The purpose of her work has been to achieve understanding of others and then of herself. Her community work as a photographic artist gave her the opportunity to work alongside individuals, artists, groups and organisations.. She described the many workshops she has been involved with and what a privilege for her to listen, and help facilitate other people’s ideas and specific experiences. The first of these workshops was centred on ‘transience’ and investigated the lives of people who had lost their homes and were waiting for a permanent place in this country. Understandably they had very little decorating their walls. Judie photographed these interiors and combined them with the thoughts and longings of the residents in their own language and an English translation
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She described further projects encompassing truth, misunderstandings, disorientation, transition, mystery and a longing for stillness in the mind. She enjoys combining her images with words and poems. The images tend to capture what she can see through her lens. Usually very little editing is done in post -production.
The images also follow a theme such here, honesty
Judie brought along a selection of her work and numerous books she had compiled.
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Thursday May 29th.
Claire Christie Sadler
Since gaining a BA (hons) in Fine Art in 2004, Claire has exhibited locally and nationally, undertaken business and ecclesiastical commissions, led community art projects in the UK and Tamil Nadu, India (2010). She also teaches experimental drawing at the Oxford Summer School.
Claire gave a very straight forward, professional description of her work both from a technical viewpoint and in her aims to pass on her love of the natural world especially the west coast of Scotland.
Here she is illustrating how she achieves the atmospheric effects of Scotland’s misty mountains. First she applies willow charcoal to a worksheet and from there uses a cloth to lift the powder onto the drawing.
Dabbing with a putty rubber brought out the highlights. Claire was very emphatic over the importance of light. We all agreed.
We also offered suggestions on other methods of ‘lifting’. For pastel stale bread or Blu tack. And we learnt that in making your own charcoal the darkest material you can create is from burning rhododendron wood.
Claire has taken part in many projects including one for the homeless. The transitory nature of these people’s lives led her towards incorporating this sense of movement into a series of bird paintings.
She brought along a selection of her work. These are part of her tree series.
Claire is a very active artist and we will publish any of her forthcoming exhibitions on our What’s On page.
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Thursday May 24th we invited Paul Drew
Paul Drew is a ceramicist, sculptor, designer. The artefacts he makes are on personal themes – vessels, relics, human forms and references to the natural world.
Familiarity with certain forms and shapes emerges from early learning, sometimes primaeval. He maintains
‘ When we have an emotional response to an object, we often don’t know how far back in ourselves we must go, to feel it is familiar. The implication is that there are memories we cannot necessarily define, but we can share with other minds.’
Julia Sorrell gave a talk on
Her works are full of ideas as she continually tries to solve unresolved problems in drawing and painting as well as creating textiles. The latter being a means of relaxing her brain and often she will be seen drawing and painting in her garden, sketching on long walks or weaving whilst a car passenger and embroidering when entertaining or at a concert.
Julia Sorrell’s artistic career has and is a never ending journey to different places as the same place would be too boring for her. She loves to discover and explore and collect . Her studio is full of dried leaves, stones, pieces of wood etc. After all why cannot a stone be a mountain, a leaf be folded material and so on. Her versitility is such that she can be developing an imaginative ‘dreamscape’ painting, then perhaps go on to do a straight drawing of plants, then follow that with a highly observed portrait in oil.
Julia has exhibited widely including one woman shows in London, and in exhibitions around the rest of the UK, Europe and the USA.
Francesca Shakespeare on February 27th
Gave a presentation of the thinking behind her work and her aims and successes in introducing art to young people. She brought along many examples of her interesting and varied work.
Although I was familiar with Francesca’s use of gouache and oil in her beautiful paintings done en plein air and in her studio. In Thursday’s talk Francesca showed us that she uses a wide range of more unusual media. I was especially intrigued by her use of beeswax and plaster to create moulded, textured and raised surfaces often using artefacts from the Ashmolean as a starting point. Very inspiring. Laraine Saedi.
Francesca uses a wide range of techniques to achieve a textured finish to her artwork. These range from applying paint to textured paper to brushing on a base layer of polyfilla mix to give a grained surface. In addition she experiments with encaustic processes and bas-relief as well as applying pastel to giclé prints.’ Eric White
Martin BEEK
Artist Martin Beek, has for many years been painting and teaching in Michigan USA. Martin’s talk described both his own work and travels in America. He showed paintings he had created, along with finished works which have been exhibited back in UK. The talk was a personal take on the many influences upon his practice and a look at landscape painting in wilderness areas. There is a rich tradition of working out of doors, particularly near the Great Lakes, Martin regularly visits Michigan near the Canadian border; an area immortalised by “The Group of Seven. ” In the 1980’s and 90’s he’d often travel in the west, and a number of these desert paintings contrast with the lush scenery of the northern forest settings.
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Thursday August 29th 2024
An evening of life-drawing at an exciting new venue.
66 Mill Street, Eynsham, OX29 4JU
The professional model, Iana, provided a series of dramatic poses from 5 minute standing to 20 minute seated. She is extremely versatile and even brought a bunch of sunflowers to enhance her poses.
The session lasted two hours.
The group consisted of both Eynsham Arts Group members and attendees at Paul Tomlinson’s Wednesday Life Drawing evenings. (see NEWS page for details). Some were relative beginners, others like myself have been drawing since time began.
Rose Clegg.
Janet is a member of Oxford Printmaker’s Association. Her main specialism is creating collagraph prints in strong tonal values. She visited us a few years ago and gave such an interesting description of her work we invited her back to do a demonstration of the entire process.
The 90 minute demonstration was very professional. She does offer workshops. Check her web-site for details.
Alison Berret lives on the outskirts of Eynsham.
Here she can enjoy the wide open space of the surrounding countryside and the dramatic skies. But her first love is the sea. She is now trying to combine these two passions into her work.
She described how through a detailed process of sketching using charcoal and pastel she creates a portfolio from which an oil or acrylic painting will eventually emerge.
Alison brought along numerous examples of sketches in sketch pads, both large and very small, and on sheets of a variety of papers including Amazon brown wrapping paper.
We were invited to try out some of the pastel and water techniques she uses. We also took part in an impromptu discussion on the future of our countryside.
It all made for a very informative and enjoyable evening.
Jing Li
Rather than demonstrate her own talent as a Chinese painter Jing Li gave us a very informative talk on the meaning behind a selection of Chinese paintings. She brought many fascinating examples with her including one scroll which stretched almost to the width of the pavilion.
Life Drawing : August 25th 2022.
Our model may look a bit bored here but actually we all thoroughly enjoyed the evening. The resounding comment at the close was
More Life-drawing please!
Jill Colchester
30th June Barely There
Jill described her gradual development from very conventional figure drawing to the kind of exciting very much reduced work she produces today. She even drew a very quick portrait of Laraine looking demure. (this back view is not Laraine).
Jane Giffith : Jewellery Making April 28th.
Jane shared her enthusiasm for jewellery making with us by describing the thinking behind the various pieces she had brought along. She also demonstrated the techniques she uses in creating necklaces in silver, precious stones as well as china and sea-glass collected from beaches in Cornwall.
She is a member of Chipping Norton Arts as well as Church Lane Gallery.
She will be exhibiting at The Square, King’s Sutton from May 22nd to May 29th during Arts Week
Moving the EAG venue to the Pavilion has certainly improved the quality of presentations. There is plenty of room for camera work and due to Chris Matthews’ excellent technical skills the demonstrations can be filmed and projected live onto a large screen. So no more jostling to get to the front row to see what is going on.
An exercise of landscape in watercolour was presented by local artist Rod Craig. The event was well attended as Rod has previously undertaken similar demonstrations locally, and is well known to many in the EAG.
Since the beginning of the first Covid Lockdown Rod has been working regularly in and around Blenheim Palace, and this demonstration consisted of the creation of a new work based on one of his photographs of a scene taken within the Blenheim Estate comprising of a foreground of low scrub and teasels, a distant view of a line of trees in the mist, framed by a full height tree on the left hand side.
Rod commented on the value of working with a limited palette and in this case he had prepared a single muted blue and a bright lemon yellow as the basis of the work. Rod’s skill lies in his ability to work in a fluid, open style which plays to the strength of watercolour and allows the painting to emerge seemingly by itself whilst his experience of the medium enables him to steer the emergence in a way that achieves harmony and balance of composition and colour. So the chosen blue and yellow were mixed to produce a variety of shades of green to structure the painting, whilst careful use of burnt sienna highlights and deep, dark splashes of foreground teasels created the highlights.
Rod’s time and effort was much appreciated by all in attendance. His style and output have brought him success and recognition locally; he frequently displays his work in local galleries and is due to host an exhibition of recent work at the
Kingfisher Gallery in Chipping Norton between 5 March and 20 March.
Comments on the evening
“Anne’s excellent presentation really allowed us all to appreciate her large steel sculptures in situ very effectively by giving us a great sense of how well they complement their environment, whilst also showing their mobile qualities as the viewer moves around them, all this together with helpful references to influences on her work. A great talk.” Christine
Collagraphic Printing with Janet Lueck
September 30th.
Janet is an Artist/Printmaker living and working in Oxford. Her specialism has involved creating Collagraph prints, which she first began in 1997 after becoming interested in this ‘Safe Print’ process, having previously worked with Etching and Woodcut print techniques.
Comments on the evening :
It was a great taster and insight into Collagraphic printing. Janet was clearly an experienced exponent of the craft and her enthusiasm was clear to see and hear. I think this is what EAG does so well, it offers lovely insight into other artists and their techniques. Long may it continue! – Chris.
Janet Lueck gave a very inspiring talk focussing mainly on collagraph printing. She showed many of her finished plates and resulting prints. She also talked us through the process and did a demonstration on preparing a plate. She was a great speaker and encouraged questions as she went along. She is very keen on returning with the possibility of her bringing her press so the whole process can be seen so look out next year for Janet Lueck part 2. – Laraine
The Great Big Green Week
September 18th to 26th
was all part of the National Environmental and Climate discussions that are going to be chaired by the UK in Glasgow at the end of September. It is all about encouraging local organisations or community groups together with individuals to do something Green/Environmental leading up to the conference.
Eynsham Arts Group:
offered work made from natural forms including using recycled, found or waste materials.
Peter Shrimpton’s Mr. Whale II was above our heads in Fish ponds.
A 1/6th representation of a Blue Whale (Balenous musculus) fabricated from a range of reclaimed steel.
A day for water colours – Farmoor sketching day
It was lovely to meet up with other Arts Group members at Farmoor, especially as I hadn’t seen several of them for quite a long time, thanks to Covid. It was good weather – the coffee and the conversation were also good.
There are plenty of subjects available – water, swans and coots, boats and boat paraphernalia but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to sketch people. We are lucky to have such a lovely place freely available to us.
Beth Wood
Eynsham Village Show
At the Eynsham Village Show we attracted many visitors who learnt about our group and what we do. Many wanted to know more about our Programme of Events and several were relieved to learn that absolutely anyone can join regardless of artistic talent. The whole afternoon was very friendly and many more residents are now pleasantly aware of our all-inclusive arts group.