Recent Events

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 Lueck

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.

Janet stressed she never uses dangerous chemicals in fact most of the materials on this mount are household items, sandpaper, paper scrunched up and there is even a sprig of rosemary.
Here she is applying ink to the mount. and then having covered all areas carefully removes excess ink from parts of the design. Thus she creates the tonal values which make her collagraphs so exciting. Although it all appeared to be very easy clearly this part of the process requires skill and experience.
The mount was then pressed onto previously soaked paper. She then made a second image without re-inking thus providing a lighter ‘ghost’ version.

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.