Virtual Summer of Art (£101-£499)
Bringing the Essex Art Trails to you
For the past 10 years Essex Summer of Art has supported over 160 art trail and open studio events throughout the county. This year, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Explore Essex are pleased to be hosting the first ever Essex Summer of Art Virtual event.
Enjoy an incredible range of work from Essex-based artists..
Please browse the work, discover more about the artists, and if you see a piece you particularly like you can even purchase it direct from the artist in most cases. Simply click on the link on their name to find out more.
This page is dedicated to works ranging from £101-499.
Browse the next gallery page here.
Browse the previous gallery page here.

19. Artist Name: Julie Parker
Work: Fools Gold
Acrylic on Canvas Board 20x20cm
I enjoy painting in several genres, including coastal landscape, still life and portraiture. My work observes the intricacies and simple beauty of the everyday and explores the fragile beauty of the Essex coast. I use various mediums in my work but especially enjoy working with pastels. I am a Leigh art trail artist and have participated in several other Essex trails and the Essex Open. I am proud to volunteer at Open Arts and help in a small way with the wonderful work they do.

20. Artist Name: Clare Sams
Work: 'Never Say Die'
Fabric Collage 250mm x 250mm
Clare Sams creates textile narratives which explore themes of home and belonging, and the human impact on natural habitats. Her work tackles challenging subjects with sensitivity and dark humour.

21. Artist Name: Julie Orpen
Work: An Orchestra of Avocets
Lino print, 38 x 27cm
I produce Lino prints and Engravings that are often inspired by the natural world around me, usually in landscape form, and I try to convey the movement in nature when I design my work, as well as a sense of depth. I often ‘break out’ from the rectangular frame of my images with blades of grass or a bird’s wing, as I think this helps to draw the viewer’s eye into the image and creates more interest.
My studies in Graphic Design (Norwich School of Art 1983 -86) have influenced the way that I have developed as a printmaker over the past few years. The flat colour produced when printing with a piece of Lino or an Engraving block can achieve either a simple ‘graphic’ image or a more complex, subtly coloured multi layered print. I use both of these techniques, depending on the subject matter and intended use, and I often use softer colours in my Linoprints. I have also incorporated the use of letterpress type in some of my prints, when illustrating the different collective nouns for birds.

22. Artist Name: Hazel Murrell
Work: Not Alone
Painting
Hazel is an illustrator specialising in children's books. Her passion for books came at a young age and alongside her artwork she is a librarian for schools. She works on both traditional and digital media, and has illustrated books for local author Paul Brown. In 2018 she received an honorary mention in the Undiscovered Voices competition.
This painting is inspired by the feeling of isolation at this time, when we are, in fact, surrounded by life. It is just very hard to see that.
23. Artist Name: Jane High
Work: ‘King’
Acrylic on canvas 28” X 22”
Jane High is a professional artist who specialises in animal portrait commissions, of both wild and domestic animals. She is a resident artist at Hadleigh Old Fire Station in Hadleigh, Essex, offering tuition in a range of subject matter and mediums. She regularly delivers workshops and demonstrations to art groups and societies in the local area. In recent years Jane has entered work in art trails, completed public murals and exhibited at the Mall Galleries in London.
24. Artist Name: Andrea Farmer
Work: ‘State Of Being'
Oil and Mixed Media on deep edge box canvas 51 X 51 cm.
Andrea Farmer is a contemporary fine artist from Chelmsford, Essex. Her ethereal landscape oil paintings focus on rural and coastal landscapes. In particular, the way light across the land creates abstract patterns, reflections and movement, causing changes to perceived colour vision.
These paintings have an energising and glowing effect with opulent colours, tactile textures and evocative forms that melt into one another, creating a meditative ethereal atmosphere.

25. Artist Name: Alison Stockmarr
Work: B is for Birds
Limited edition signed A2 giclée print
Stockmarr is a contemporary artist producing collaged 3-D artworks from old books, record sleeves and found ephemera. With an ethos of storytelling and repurposing at its heart, materials are rescued and recycled into what appears as decorative book art, but on closer inspection often displays a playful, contemporary twist. Old books, records, Encyclopaedias and their titles are her starting point.
Apertures are laser-cut into their surfaces with hand-cut found ephemera assembled in layers. With an extensive library of original works, she produces giclée prints. Included in the 250th Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, she exhibits work nationally and internationally.

26. Artist Name: Caroline Avey
Work: Female Form
Hanging Ceramic approx. 37 H x 30 W x 10 D cm
Tactile and sensual, that’s the beauty of working in clay. I predominately use hand-building techniques, taking inspiration from the curvilinear forms of the female body. I am also part of the team exhibiting and fundraising at Gravelly Barn.
Discover more here.

27. Artist Name: Nicola Contreras
Work: St Peter’s Chapel Bradwell on Sea
Media: Acrylic on paper 45x64cms
From her studio at East Mersea near the Pyefleet estuary, Nicola Contreras coils porcelain vessels whose shapes emerge quite organically during the process, are carved meticulously sometimes coloured, glazed or painted and when fired become partly translucent. Presented in vitrines they also form sculptures.
Nicola is currently working on paintings inspired during workshops given by abstract landscape artists Simon Carter and David Tress. With BA Fashion Design/Textiles, Nicola spent 10 years designing in London and New York, and after training in ceramics exhibited in Europe, USA, and UK including Chelsea Crafts Fair, Yorkshire Sculpture Park and Designers Guild Chelsea.

28. Artist Name: Cherry Hall
Work: Larking Around
"Larking Around” is a mosaic garden piece, made with found treasure from a friend who has a Mud Larking licence for The river Thames. You can find more of this artists work at Hylands Artist Studios at :-http://hylandsestate.co.uk/ Miss Flingy’s Creative Space.

29.. Artist Name: Jonathan Farningham
Work: Still Life
H24cm x w30cm
My work concerns viewing the world around me and remodelling it with oil paint. My way of seeing is to respond to colour and tone and analyse the roles they play in what I observe and I believe in utilising a simple palette of primary colours and white because what we see is a dappled set of nuances based on the simplest of colours. My intention is to always paint without prejudice as if seeing for the first time.
30. Artist Name: Shaun Hall
Work: Pisces raku copper matte vessel
Media: approx 32cm x 20cm
I began making ceramics in 1998 after studying at Middlesex University under the tutelage of British Studio potters such as Mo Jupp and Emmanuel Cooper. I work with slab constructed clay and also throw on the wheel.
Landscape and coastlines influence the direction of my work as well as trips to museums to study artifacts and pottery from the past. Japanese ceramics are a big influence, although it's not something I consciously try and imitate. I work from my studio in Halstead, north essex.

31. Artist Name: Tanya Krackowizer
Work: Sterling silver handmade dress ring set with a faceted African Amethyst
I have been designing and hand crafting jewellery since the day my mum took me to buy beads as a teenager. Having gained a BA (Hons) in Jewellery from Middlesex University, I set up my first studio in London and launched my first collection in 1997.
Now, I am a 'Jeweller in Residence' at the Hylands Estate Artist Studios where you can come and see me work, chat to me and buy or commission pieces. You can even learn how to make your own jewellery at one of my Jewellery Making Taster Sessions. My jewellery is simple but effective and this amethyst ring is no exception.

32. Artist Name: Jane Frederick
Work: Villa Gamberaia: towards the pool
(Part of The Garden Seekers Project due to launch 2020)
Watercolour on paper 70 x 50 cm
The Garden Seekers Project is an installation of large scale drawing, painting and digital film, celebrating the lure and intrigue of historical formal gardens. Examining the relationship between gardens and well-being, the work invites viewers to engage with the visual and sensory experience of the garden as a place for delight and contemplation with the restorative properties of water at its heart.
'Towards the pool’ is one of a series exploring the atmospheric formal gardens of the Villa Gamberaia near Florence, Italy.

33. Artist Name: Chris Harvey
Work: Elm Burr with Blue Pigmented Resin
I’m a woodturner turning a varied range of artistic pieces from English Hardwoods largely sourced locally from several National Trust properties.
I love the tactile nature of wood and particularly relish taking a damaged piece, enhancing it with resin and coloured pigments allowing me to create items from pieces of timber that would otherwise be discarded.

34. Artist Name: Benjamin Brown
Work: Idle
Benjamin Brown (b.1989) is an emerging artist living in Manningtree, the smallest town in the UK.
Benjamin is making work that speaks of a hidden landscape – not the picturesque and bucolic ones that Constable and Gainsborough favoured, rather the ignored, unseen and forgotten that many of us contribute to but not many consider. He absorbs the essence of the place he lives in then re-configures it to create his abstract works.
'Idle' is a sculpture made using materials found in the River Stour. An Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Through Harwich, Manningtree, Flatford, Dedham and beyond.

35. Artist Name: Nick Miller
Work: “Through the Wormhole”
Original in Ink and Poster colour, 385mm X 410mm. Printed on Hahnemuhle Bamboo 290gsm and framed in white with white border.
As an ex Merchant Navy navigating officer, the compass motif began to feature heavily in my art. I formed the basis of this work using concentric circles and dividing them up into points of the compass. From then on it is all freehand.
First drawn in pencil, then outlined in ink using a 0.1mm architect pen. It was then painted and then outlined again in ink.
The MN gave me plenty of spare time. We didn't have the distractions of video/DVD players, computers and mobiles as they hadn't been invented! So I had much time to develop my highly detailed drawings and paintings.

36. Artist Name: James Weaver
Work: 'Sunset Over Feldy Marsh'
Media Pastel on Paper Dimensions (excluding frame & mount) 50cm x 36cm

37. Artist Name: Lupe Cunha
Work: Breaking the Light
Media: Acrylic on Canvas, 65x90cm
My art practice is influenced by emotional experiences. The events that happen to me and those around me are the catalyst for my abstract art. This art is intuitive and in the same way we sometimes find it difficult to access our feeling, in my artwork I use music to tap my inner emotions. This is why I call my current body of work 'Colour as Instrumental'.
In the same way as in music, instruments emotes a feeling rather than describes a story, my colour and marks work in the same way on the viewers’ emotions. While looking at my paintings I don’t want to my viewer to see something or understand a story - but to simply feel an emotion.

38. Artist Name: Livy Christie
Work: "Sealed with a Kiss" *SOLD*
Due to my liquid-art technique, my paintings are abstract, characterised by organic formations and continuous flow. Viewers can often 'see' different things within the composition.
I named this piece ‘Sealed with a Kiss’ as I see a profile of a face in the top third of the painting. To me, this figure resembles an angel, with long hair flowing in the wind. Her lips are puckered, and from her lips appear two small ‘kisses’, as if she is blowing someone a kiss. I like to think this angel is wishing her subject a blessing and sealing it with a kiss.

39. Artist Name: Blind Alley Art
Work: ‘Crazy Daisies’
I am an award winning blind artist having developed my own form of tactile art using acrylic compounds and gels and also D.I.Y. materials including grouting, fillers and putty.
I map out the subject using Blue Tack and then fill in the shape with the gels/compounds. I then use my fingers to put on the paints and use two electronic aids for the blind which will read out the colour of the paint.
I have enjoyed a number of exhibitions locally and throughout the U.K. and also give art workshops for those with learning difficulties and sight loss on-line and with Sil Ship TFL. I lost my sight 25 years ago and have a Guide dog named Mary who is my third four-legged companion.

40. Artist Name: Agnieszka Aleksandra Dlugosz
Work: 'Beautiful Nurse in the Mist'
Media: Acrylic paint on acrylic knit. 22 x 30 cm
The painting celebrates the heroic effort of nurses in the frontline of the Covid-19 crisis. While society is saving its own unprepared sanity through escapism into fantasies, conspiracy theories and narratives sourced from sci-fi and apocalyptic films, the nurses are the real heroes, wearing real masks to save the real world. Nurses are separated from the perceived salvation of these fantasies by their crude reality.
I have replaced traditional canvas with a homemade woven fabric. The knit also refers to activities, somewhat previously forgotten and abandoned, but now rediscovered and cherished during the current quarantine. The aspect of "homemade-ness" is being widely implemented today to evade "home-madness".
Browse the next virtual gallery page here.