Show and Tell December 2025

Sue Ripley and Jean Bashford are in the spotlight for this month’s ‘Show and Tell’. The narrative of their joint enterprise of travelling together, embarking on an 800 mile round trip, to take part in Nick Boddimeade’s three day art course at “Emily Ball at Seawhite”, Partridge Green near Brighton was utterly compelling and instructive.

First up was Sue who set up her sketches and finished pieces in beautiful water based acrylic paint evidencing the progression in her work on the course. Sue, already an accomplished abstract landscapist, says she felt she needed to go with some confidence in, and evidence of, her current and established work in the form of a sketchbook as well as an idea of what she wanted to achieve from the course.

The goals which Sue had set for herself were to explore ideas around how marks and shapes affect and travel towards the outer areas of the painting and to consider varieties and methods of mark making to further her abstract journey, and to extend her palette tones and colours.

Sue found the course to be well structured and totally work focussed. There were slide shows of various other contemporary artists work, exercises on depicting negative and positive spaces and personal mentoring focussing on each individuals style and ambition. Sue found Nick’s advice and abiding rule of “Be prepared to change everything” to be instructive and very liberating.

The work focussed ethic found them always exploring how their own particular image is made, looking at the process and busily painting on each of the three days. These moves forward towards Sue’s desired goals are illustrated so positively in her paintings still in progress here before us. They show a definite enrichment while still retaining a lyrical delicacy and feeling of someone having stepped lightly through the geography of a landscape. The course doesn’t just end when it ended as Sue continues the development of further ideas and sketches in her work.

By the end of the final day there was a critique session where all participants gave their usually positive feedback and personal interpretation of each artist’s work. During this the individual artist is not allowed to comment but just to listen to the comments and opinions held on their work. Sue found it was revealing to hear how each person saw something new or different in her paintings from the way she herself had viewed or intended.

Next up is Jean but, while she is preparing her display of pictures, David treats us to an amusing “Fawlty Towers” like account of a still life course he went on run by a well known artist. The paintings produced on the course were exceedingly good and they emerged so well in the end but David knows not how. There was to be a slide show by said popular artist as part of his teaching strategy. However when it came to it he said he couldn’t really be bothered, so it didn’t happen. There was also a question and answer session but, as it turned out, every question asked by participants was not answered by the course tutor but by the questioners themselves as he reversed the procedure and bounced the question back at them. Thereby getting them to answer their own question, so maybe he learned as much as they did. However David has no complaints because the end result of the course was a very positive set of still life paintings.

Just as Sue did, Jean took examples of her abstract works and also her iPad which contains her very many photos of the beloved local woods which she has walked and captured images of for more than twenty five years.

Jean was searching for a way to unite her two passions of abstract art and landscape photography, bringing them both together as one. With Nick’s help and understanding of her desired direction the many sketches and paintings on display show how she progressed on a journey of discovery. Starting with very simplified black and white drawings from the photographs Jean was able to identify minimised shapes and forms which spoke of the essence of the landscape. The next step was to turn these into coloured abstract landscapes. Using her derived sketches and still referring to her photo images Jean employed just one colour plus black and white and with her simplified shapes produced an array of powerful pieces. I think that Jean always knew this secret garden of work was already there within her grasp but just needed the key to open the door which happened when she gifted herself the right time, tutor and place.

Since returning home Jean has continued enthusiastically making more images and is also considering working larger. Both artists are following a statement from the course which says “ It’s not what the image is, it’s how it is made”.

The course was clearly aimed at the individual and personal direction and development of each artist as shown by the two very different styles of our two artists illustrated here. I feel we all benefited as a group from Sue and Jean and it led us to discussing so many aspects and ideas from Sue and Jean's sharing of their time there.

Some of Sue's work including details from her paintings.

A selection of Jean's work showing her progression.