Robin Easterby
Trees have been Robin’s preoccupation – some say obsession – since he moved from London to Battle six years ago. Surrounded by ancient woodland and new areas to explore, this landscape has become his driving focus, shaping his unique perspective as a painter.
Robin’s work captures seasonal shifts and the tiny, often-missed details of the natural world. His practice is a spiritual connection to nature; it serves as a bridge between our busy modern lives and the enduring beauty of East Sussex woodlands.
Every piece begins with a walk alongside his two lurchers. Each day he observes the forest’s transformation: the bright greens of spring, the sun-baked gold of summer, the moody decay of autumn, and the quiet clarity of winter. Robin does not use photographs or sketches; instead he returns to his Battle studio to paint purely from the memory and emotions of that day. This makes his process incredibly physical, gestural and full of movement.
Working on wood or canvas, Robin has spent 20 years refining a technique using acrylics, oils, pencils and house paint. He often embeds found materials – leaves, twigs, seeds and earth – directly into the surface, bringing the actual “DNA” of the forest into the artwork.
An active member of the local creative community, Robin shares his studio space to help foster positive energy and wellness for himself and others. He has exhibited locally at Rye Art Gallery, The Greenfinch in Ticehurst, and Art and Space in Tenterden in Kent. His work has resonated widely, held in private collections across the UK and Europe.
For Robin, painting is a way to quiet a busy mind and transform environmental concern into something beautiful. In a time when our forests face pressure, these works act as an emotional anchor – a gentle reminder to pause, reconnect with our less technological roots, and protect these living spaces.
Insta: RW_Easterby RW Easterby FB Website: www.rweasterby.com Email: rweasterby@gmail.com
Robin Easterby, ‘Even Song’, £350. 33x38cm framed in grey slate wooden frame.
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Sue Farrant
Sue Farrant is a Robertsbridge-based contemporary abstract artist. She works in acrylics and watercolour, and also enjoys working with collage, textiles and photography, often combining techniques. Her work explores the interaction of shape, form, texture and light, drawing inspiration from the surfaces and tones of the surrounding High Weald countryside and seaside.
As a self-taught artist, Sue has developed a distinct visual language over two decades during which her work has been exhibited across Sussex and Kent.
Instagram – @suefarrant
Sue Farrant, ‘Forgotten Landscape’, £70. 52cm wide 42cm tall. Acrylic on paper with charcoal.
This abstract painting powerfully conveys a forgotten landscape as a decaying memory, using harsh geometry, weathered textures, and an earthy palette to evoke a sense of deep time and abandonment. The composition functions like an aerial map or an archaeological cross-section of a place lost to history.
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Simon Green
As an artist, landscape architect, and environmentalist, Simon explores the intricate relationships between landscape, identity and memory. Drawing on a background in landscape architecture and studies at Edinburgh College of Art, their practice investigates climate change, geology, and the dynamic natural forces that shape our environments.
Working across mixed media, ink, acrylic, pencil and collage, Simon creates richly textured works that often incorporate natural materials gathered from the landscapes they depict. Soils, minerals and substrates become integral components of the artwork, while sticks and branches collected on site are used as drawing tools, allowing the landscape itself to become an active participant in the creative process. Through this deeply place-responsive approach, each work offers a layered exploration of the character, materiality, and evolving identity of the natural world and our relationship with it.
Instagram – @simonjagreen email – sjagreen@btinternet.com
Simon Green, ‘Brede Highwoods, Sussex’, £50. Stick and ink, 24x18cm.
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Rosemary Gurney Clark
Rosemary has worked as a watercolour artist for over 40 years. She was inspired by her tutor, the artist Barry Watkins, who showed her the wonderful movement of pigment on paper. In the 1990s Rosemary completed a course in Etching at Maidstone College and has continued to work with plates of copper, acid baths and a beautiful old cast iron etching press in her studio.
She has shown at the Barbican, Westminster Central Hall and the Mall Gallery amongst many other galleries throughout London and the South East. She has completed many commissions over the years and she has work hanging in several countries.
rosemary@rosemarygurneyclark.co.uk www.rosemarygurneyclark.co.uk
Rosemary Gurney Clark, ‘Grindelwald to the Eiger’, £800. The framed painting measures 93cm wide by 58cm high. Pen and watercolour created from the landing station halfway up the mountain in Switzerland. It is a panoramic view of almost 180 degrees.
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Gina Hellis
After studying Textiles at university, Gina embarked on a career in education, teaching Fine Art and Textiles for almost twenty years. Working with students up to A Level, she has inspired generations of young artists to develop confidence, curiosity and a love of creative exploration.
Recently she established her own art school, creating a welcoming environment where people of all ages can discover and develop their artistic potential. This new chapter has also allowed her the time and freedom to return to her own creative practice, exploring ideas that had taken a back seat during her years in the classroom.
Her background in textiles continues to influence her work through the use of layered surfaces, torn papers, hand stitching and tactile materials. These processes have become a visual language through which she explores contemporary social issues and the human experience.
Her latest body of work is inspired by growing concerns about the widening divisions within society. Responding to increasing inequality, financial insecurity and the imbalance between privilege and hardship, her work examines themes of fragmentation, repair and resilience. Through the physical acts of tearing, layering and stitching she reflects on the fractures that exist within communities while suggesting the possibility of connection and healing. Rather than offering solutions, her work invites viewers to pause and reflect on the spaces between abundance and scarcity, inclusion and exclusion, and asks whether a society that feels increasingly divided can be stitched back together.
As both an educator and practising artist she believes creativity has the power to challenge perspectives, encourage conversation and foster empathy. Her work seeks not only to communicate personal concerns but also to inspire meaningful dialogue about the world we share.
Instagram and Facebook @ozandbelle
Gina Hellis, ‘Holding Together’, £145. Mixed media on canvas, 30x40cm.
Holding Together explores the resilience of communities in the face of growing inequality. The torn layers reflect the widening divisions within society, while the bold stitched thread symbolises the determination to repair, reconnect and endure. The gold leaf represents a small but influential minority whose wealth and privilege continue to grow, standing in stark contrast to the financial hardship experienced by many. Despite these inequalities, the vibrant colours and visible stitching offer hope. Holding together, responsibility can strengthen the bonds that connect us. The work asks whether society can continue holding together before those divisions become too great to mend.
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Roger Hill
A Sense of Place – by Dr. Grant Pooke
Roger Hill (b.1942) undertook a Diploma in Art & Design at Brighton College of Art between 1961/2 and 1965/66. As a young painter, he belonged to a generation on the cusp of what became the Pop Art movement and a transnational counterculture. Roger’s aesthetic melds two distinct but connected sensibilities which are underscored in the sequence of local landscapes and affectionate portrait studies.
The first references a British modernist landscape tradition associated with painters like Peter Prendergast (to whom Roger was distantly related), the Sussex vistas of Paul Nash and the more urban practice of Frank Auerbach. An intense focus on the primacy of motif is appreciable from the sequence of works exhibited here which were largely completed in the Spring and Summer of this year.
The oil studies exploring the derelict Mill Site (originally Hodson’s Mill) re-envision its surrounding fieldscapes, exploring planar surface, colour and form. The analogy to a palimpsest situates Roger’s iterative engagement with medium, re-working motifs to achieve the desired form and affect. It sometimes lends to his finished canvases a kind of spectral hauntology, revealing previous designs and intentions.
The second dimension to Roger’s practice regards an impulse to abstraction. It’s apparent in the lattice and grid backgrounds to his portrait studies and in the typically shallow delineation of figure/ground relationships. He has often spoken of ‘shapes in space’ as part of the painting process, recognising the artificial conventions which ultimately define all figurative and perspectival composition.
The word ‘community’ is sometimes invoked in a weak sense when all that is really being described are accidents of mere adjacency. But Roger’s aesthetic evidences something far more authentic: a profound emotional investment with location and to those landmarks and people that render Robertsbridge a home and a place in which to fashion vocation, commonality and friendship.
rogerhillartist@gmail.com
Roger Hill, ‘The Mill (1)’. £450. Oil on canvas, 92 x 61c, framed.
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