Karen Pitcher
Karen Pitcher is a photographer, printmaker, yoga teacher and mother of three based in rural East Sussex. Inspired by woodland, the changing seasons and the quiet details of the natural world, her work explores themes of nature, stillness and connection.
Photography forms the starting point for much of her practice, but rather than simply reproducing an image, she uses the screen-printing process to reinterpret it – playing with layers, texture and tone to capture not just a place, but a feeling. She is particularly drawn to trees and the enduring qualities they represent: strength, resilience and the ability to adapt through changing seasons.
Alongside her artistic practice Karen teaches yoga, where she is equally inspired by the natural world. Both disciplines share the same philosophy: encouraging a slower pace, greater awareness and a deeper appreciation of the world around us. Whether through movement or print, she hopes to create moments that invite people to pause, look more closely and reconnect with nature.
As a mother of three life is wonderfully busy, and carving out time to create is something she values deeply. For Karen, making art is as much about the process as the finished work. It offers a chance to slow down, work with her hands and find moments of calm – something she hopes her work encourages others to experience too.
karenpitcher@gmail.com
Karen Pitcher, ‘The Road Not Taken’, £350, screen print from photo
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Nessie Ramm
Nessie Ramm is on a mission to paint the road verges of Britain, to bring the wild beauty and value of these unloved spaces to our attention. Her work is a celebration of the plants, insects and birds that flourish there and also a deeper call to re-evaluate our relationship with the natural world.
Nessie is the winner of the NEAC Climate Emergency Prize 2025, is a fellow member of the Society of Botanical Artists and is working with Plantlife as their 25-26 Creative Friend.
During 2025 she made a series of paintings sitting by the side of the A21 using metal panels crafted from old road signs.
She has exhibited in various curated group shows including Odyssey at Hastings Contemporary, Wells Art Contemporary, ING Discerning Eye, New English Art Club, The Landscape Open at Salisbury Museum, Guildford House Gallery Open and Sussex Contemporary. She teaches at various locations including Knepp Wildland in West Sussex.
Nessie is a botanical and landscape painter with a degree in Natural Sciences from Cambridge Universith and an MA in Fine Art from City and Guilds of London Art School. Her work has featured in BBC Countryfile Magazine and Resurgence & Ecologist.
She lives and works in Wadhurst, East Sussex where she also leads a community group which reintroduces wildflowers into local road verges.
nessieroadart@gmail.com Instagram: @nessie_ramm www.nessieramm.co.uk
Nessie Ramm, ‘Roadworks at Crazy Lane’, Sedlescombe. £3200 Ground Ivy and Cut-leaved Cranesbill. Oil on aluminium, H105 x W 85 x D 60cm including stand.
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Tom Soper
Tom Soper is a painter and architect based in a studio in the East Sussex woodlands. His painting practice grew out of a need for creative release that his architectural career, while professionally fulfilling, could not fully satisfy – a space for pure intuition set against the systematic, collaborative nature of building design.
Tom describes the relationship between his two disciplines as one of productive tension. Where architecture demands precision, planning, and coordination, painting offers him complete freedom to respond instinctively to the materials in front of him. Yet his architectural training profoundly shapes his visual sensibility: years spent studying how light moves through space, how materials weather and age, and how buildings relate to their landscape have given him an intuitive grasp of composition, atmosphere, and spatial relationship that surfaces naturally in his canvases. Light is the constant thread running through both practices. In his architectural work, much of it centred on the careful preservation and enhancement of natural light within historic buildings, Tom has spent years balancing conservation with contemporary need. In painting, that same fascination becomes an exploration of light as subject and emotion – whether the dramatic coastal atmospheres of Ireland’s west coast or the dappled forest light outside his own studio door. His process is deliberately unplanned.
Tom begins with no predetermined image, letting the interaction of brush, paint and canvas guide each work as it develops. This intuitive method has produced several distinct but related bodies of work, including intimate landscape studies drawn from memory of the Irish coast and expressive woodland pieces inspired by his daily surroundings.
tom@sunlightstudio.org
Tom Soper, ‘Stonegate Dusk’, £650. 80 x 55cm. A view over rolling Sussex farmland at the close of day, hazy blue hills receding into a pale sky above furrowed fields turning gold in the last light. Oil on board, painted with a soft, atmospheric touch that favours mood over detail.
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Katherine Steadman
Katherine Steadman is an artist who has grown up in Robertsbridge since childhood for over thirty years, she is a working mother raising her own two boys and is studying BA Honours Degree of Fine Art at Hastings College, East Sussex. Her work is a developing exploration of portraiture, self-reflection, the mind, what we see externally and how we feel internally, driven by a fascination for the lived human experience and neurodiversity. Through painting, drawing, ink, printmaking, and collaging on different surfaces, Katherine intends to ever explore the energy, and expansion of authenticity that creativity provides. Katherine draws inspiration from memories, reality, stories and dreams and wishes to propel expression and colour onto the surface as a form of therapy, growth and release. Inspired by her children in recent years, leading to self-discovery, her work is intuitive, figurative and colourful, circulating around life and its moments of realisation.
Email: Katstead91@hotmail.com Instagram: @kath.erine.ls
Karen Steadman, A Cafe Conversation, £65.00 Work on paper, A3, acrylic on paper. Working with less, is it more? Focusing on just two contrasting colours, playing with tone, light and dark, painting what is seen. Can vibrancy and expression be captured through minimal use of a colour pallet.
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Anna Stubbs
Anna Stubbs is a UK based artist whose practice moves fluidly between botanical art, landscape studies, and intimate graphite figure drawing. Rooted in the quiet rhythms of East Sussex, her work is shaped by an instinctive attentiveness to the natural world – its textures, its emotional weather, and its ability to mirror thie inner life. She approaches each piece as a form of listening: to the curve of a stem, the fall of light across a shoulder, the way a horizon can hold both stillness and longing. Her drawings and paintings are known for their delicacy and depth, often blending find detail with atmospheric softness. Whether working in graphite, watercolour, or oils, she builds layers that feel both precise and dreamlike, inviting viewers into a space of contemplation. Her landscapes frequently capture quiet drama with a poetic sensibility.
Alongside her studio practice, Anna Stubbs is an art entrepreneur and facilitator of art wellbeing workshops for NHS staff, where she uses creativity as a restorative tool. Her medical background as an Emergency Medicine Consultant informs her understanding of burnout, resilience, and the therapeutic power of making. These workshops blend gentle storytelling, sensory grounding, and accessible creative exercises, offering participants a calm, low-stimulus environment in which to reconnect with themselves. Her work is deeply shaped by themes of care – care for nature, care for the body, care for the unseen emotional landscapes people carry. She sees art as a bridge between inner and outer worlds, a way of honouring fragility while celebrating strength.
anna_stubbs_artwork, Artwork Annastubbsartwork.co.uk, annastubbs@icloud.com
Anna Stubbs, ‘Lilies,’ £320, watercolour, 40.5 x 51.5 cm
A luminous study of white lilies, this watercolour invites viewers into a moment of stillness and quiet bloom. Each petal is captured with attentive layering, allowing soft washes of cream, violet and gold to reveal the flower’s sculptural elegance. The dark, muted background heightens their radiance, creating a gentle chiaroscuro that feels both intimate and contemplative. The lilies appear suspended in light, their curling forms rendered with a balance of precision and tenderness that reflects the botanical detail. Through this work you are invited to pause, breathe, and notice the subtle beauty held within natural forms.