Hashim Akib
Working as an illustrator in the UK for over 15 years, Hashim gained valuable experience in developing a backbone of drawing, conceptual ideas and various painting techniques. His illustration client list varied from New Yorker magazine, newspapers such as The Times, Daily Express, Daily Mail, Time magazine, ad campaigns for Smirnoff, Esso and a stamp for The Royal Mail. Throughout his career Hashim has won many awards; including in 2009 the SAA (Society of All Artists) Artist of the Year, having won the Professional title in 2005 and 2007. He worked with the art manufacturer Daler Rowney in their relaunch of the System 3 Acrylic range producing paintings for the ad campaign and demonstrating the versatility of the paint at various events and on live television. His first book entitled ‘Vibrant Acrylics’ was published by Search Press in 2012 which has now been translated into French, German, Italian and Dutch and includes a companion DVD of the same name. He has been featured in various art publications including The Artist, Pratique des Arts, Art of England and is a regularly contributor to the Artists and Illustrators magazine.
More recently Hashim has been featured in a publication entitled ‘Painting in Acrylics; The Indispensable Guide’, Who’s, Who in Art and co authored ‘ Artists Painting Techniques’ published by Dorling Kindersley in 2016.His next book ‘Painting Urban and Cityscapes’ was released in 2017, published by Crowood Press. Hash’s latest book in 2019 is ‘Painting Portraits in Acrylics’, published by Search Press reached number 1 in Amazon’s Acrylic Painting Techniques category.
He is represented by several galleries in the UK and has exhibited with the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, New English Art Club, Society of Wildlife Artists, David Shepherd Artist of the Year and Royal Society of Marine Artists at the prestigious Mall Galleries in London. He is in the UK’s National Art collection and has also taught his unique techniques to art schools in the UK, Italy and France.
Instagram: @hashpaints
https://www.hashimakib.co.uk/
Hashim Akib, ‘Red Chairs’ £900. Size, 24 x 30inch. Medium, Acrylic on stretched canvas.
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Adam Baker
Adam developed a love of wood in childhood. Today, his work includes functional & purely decorative pieces. Determined by the wood itself, Adam’s items have an organic quality. Many are as unique as the wood itself.
email : adambaker733@btinternet.com instagram: thewibblywobblywoodman
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Katrina Blench
Living in the countryside near Brightling and close to Hastings, the influences of British wildlife and the sea are seen in the work by Kat Blench. The incongruity of boats that would sink and fish swimming on a serving plate appeals to her. The use of mono printing and raku firing ensures no piece is alike, and the look of the finished work is never certain.
The animal sculptures are first drawn, then built up in clay, observing the muscle shape to cut the clay slabs. Underglazes and oxides give the pieces their matt finish.
Katrinablench@val_evans23hotmail.com
Katrina Blench, ‘Boats’. Various ceramic boats. Raku and stoneware fishing and rowing boats and canoes. Large – 25cm long, 11cm high, 9cm wide – £25, Small – 11cm long, 4cm high, 5.5cm wide – £18
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Kate Crofton
Kate Crofton is a Robertsbridge artist whose work explores breath, transition, and the thin places between the everyday and the mythic. She began her practice in watercolour when injury forced a hiatus from sport.
Drawn to the medium’s fluidity, unpredictability, and capacity for atmosphere and escapism, she has a fascination for the play of light and shade. In pieces like her glowing candles, luminous seascapes, soft whales drifting through indigo depths, and silhouetted figures standing beneath vast, clouded skies, Kate uses washes, blooms, and granulation to suggest rather than rigidly define. Light, water and movement recur – the sun on waves, birds in flight, and figures who seem to be listening to something just beyond hearing.
Her current watercolour work leans into folklore and quiet ritual. She paints witches, not as caricatures, but as guardians and watchers: tall figures standing at the edge of a stormy sky, accompanied by crows. Her candle work juxtaposes deep backgrounds with the brightness of flame. These are paintings about community, intuition, and the power held in stillness.
In recent years Kate has also moved into acrylic, working on a larger scale. Her triptych ‘Breathe’ – ‘Inhale’. ‘Hold’. ‘Exhale’. translates her watercolour sensitivity into bold layered compositions. Using deep indigos and stark whites, she depicts dandelion seed heads as metaphors for holding, pausing, and letting go. The work uses natural light to activate the surfaces and invite viewers into the pause between breaths.
Across both mediums, Kate is interested in that which cannot be held: air, time, memory, and magic. Her paintings offer space to exhale, and to believe, even briefly, that something else is watching the sky with you.
croftonkate@gmail.com
Kate Crofton, ‘Inhale’, Hold, Exhale’ from the ‘Breathe’ series, £50 each or £120 for the 3, 61x61cm acrylic. A tryptych of dandelion heads near and far, in focus and out, on a dark blue background. Symbolising the tension of the inhale, versus the relaxation of the exhale, with the stillness of a breath held in between.
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Jo di Maggio
Johanna works with textiles and stitch showing imagery of the plants of East Sussex with the suggestion of vase forms. Using natural plant dyes and cyanotype sun prints of grasses and wildflowers, local walks and the surrounding countryside are captured with delicate imagery and hand stitching.
johannadimaggio@hotmail.co.uk
Jo di Maggio, ‘Vessels with Poppy’, £200. Cyanotype print on habutai silk, 43x33cm
Leaves, grasses and flowers begin to move from the silhouetted surface of vessels. Framed with anti-reflective glass.
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Samantha Durrant
Sam Durrant is a wildlife photographer whose work centres on the brief, unguarded moments that define an animal’s character – a pause, a glance, a sudden stillness that reveals something of the creature’s inner life. Her photographs are made entirely in the field, shaped by patience, careful observation and a deep respect for natural behaviour.
Working with wild animals demands persistence above almost everything else. A successful image may follow hours in darkness or cold, repeated visits to the same location across different seasons, or long periods in which nothing happens at all. Sam is drawn to those rare instances when an animal moves through its environment in a way that feels both fleeting and wholly itself – and her aim is to give the viewer the sense of having been present at that moment.
Her photography spans the United Kingdom and locations further afield, reached through extensive travel. For this exhibition the selection focuses on British wildlife – woodland mammals, upland deer, owls and waterside birds – photographed across different seasons and habitats, and in conditions that are rarely predictable or repeatable.
Each image is a faithful record of what was present when the shutter was released. Sam does not composite scenes or introduce elements that were not there. Post-production is confined to preparing the image accurately for print – preserving the atmosphere, colour and detail of the original moment, or rendering it in black and white where that better serves the image.
Sam lives and works in East Sussex.
sjdurrant69@gmail.com
Samantha Durrant, ‘Midnight Foragers’, £125
Two badgers caught at the water’s edge in Scottish woodland, in the middle of the night. This image was the result of multiple nights of waiting in darkness and cold – badgers are cautious, unhurried animals that move entirely on their own terms. A carefully positioned flash was essential, the only means of photographing nocturnal subjects in the field. The still water provided the reflection that completes the composition – an image of a moment that most people will never have the opportunity to witness in the wild. Find art paper print, glass fronted frame. Dimensions TBC.
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