Medway Open Studios July 2026

Author: Ann

Ann has been drawing and painting from 2007; she works in OILS principally land, sky and seascapes, often working directly out of doors in front of the scene. Recently her work has developed to become larger, more abstract and expressionistic. Ann’s paintings are now often developed in the studio from her experiences en plein air, sketches and photographs, gaining inspiration from her travels in France and to the coasts of Cornwall and Normandy as well as her home county of Kent. Ann developed her reputation as a plein air painter; working in the vineyards of the Loire Valley and around the Kent Coast where until 2017 she worked out of a beach hut in Whitstable. Ann now works from Studio One at Nucleus Arts Halpern Conservancy Building 15, High Street, Rochester, Kent; she also works from home painting in her conservatory and using her Attic Studio for preparing canvases and framing and storing her work. Currently Ann is working on a series of shoreline, sea and skyscape paintings around the Kent Coast and Cornwall. Ann builds her own canvases using stretcher bars and 12oz cotton duck. then prime it with 3 coats of acrylic primer and/or gesso. She usually coats the canvas with turpsy red, often Indian red, sometimes Burnt Siena. When this is dry she lays out the scene with a thin coat of oil paints then building on this, firstly using a brush, then thick oil paint applied with a palette knife. The extent to which the painting is built with more impasto depends on the scene and mood. Ann’s style is impressionistic, representative tending towards some abstraction and expressionism. Ann is working on a series of paintings depicting the beaches of Whitstable on the north coast of Kent and in Cornwall, at various times of day and year, state of the tide and weathers inspired by Ann’s experience painting on the beach. Ann has been painting in Whitstable for some 5 years, standing on the pebbly beach watching the tide ebb and flow, the morning mist across the Swale (the water which separates the Isle of Sheppey from the mainland), the light on the horizon, the clouds coming in from the west over London, and the light out to sea to the north and east. The low tide exposes sandbanks, pebbles, seafood for the gulls to seek. Ann exhibits in Capital Arts Gallery in Eltham, Horsebridge Gallery in Whitstable, Brick Lane Gallery in East London, Elizabeth James Gallery in Croydon and York St Gallery, Ramsgate and with Gabriel Fine Arts in London. She exhibits at Art Fairs, notably the Parallax Art Fair, Talented Art Fair and East Sussex Art Fair and Roy’s People Art Fair. She also has a travelling exhibition of 10 large seascapes in oil with Little Van Gogh (www.littlevangogh.co.uk). Ann’s work is in collections across the UK and the US and this year she will be represented by Art Blend in the Joseph Gallery, Fort Lauderdale and by Art Productions, New York and by Rossocinabra Gallery in Rome and by PAKS Gallery in Austria and her work will be seen in Art Fairs in Europe and the US. View all posts by Ann