Green Pebble Magazine

Articles

Paul Harris: Inside and Out
Autumn 2008 issue
‘A rope has never been made, that can bind thought.’
Thus asserts a proverb that could have been written for Paul Harris, a Norfolk painter who has battled unforgiving odds to become a professional artist...
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London Calling
Autumn 2008 issue
With London responsible for a significant proportion of the world’s multi-billion pound art market, Britain’s capital city is now truly a Mecca for aspiring artists. But as those artists mature, many move away to continue their work elsewhere. Ruby Ormerod reports on Nigel Casseldine, Rosemary Carruthers and Paul Robinson; all East Anglian artists who have successfully forged, and maintained, ties with galleries in the city...
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Jewels of India
Autumn 2008 issue
Artists throughout the centuries have been inspired by the colour, contrasts and sensations that India offers in abundance. A wealth of sensory experience and spiritual intensity awaits the visitor, although many Indians still live very simply or in dire poverty. This autumn, three East Anglian artists, Valerie Armstrong, Jennifer Hall and Annie Owen, will share their individual experiences of travelling in India through their work. They have elected to use Kala Yatra, their exhibition during London’s Asian Art Week, to celebrate what they saw and felt during their travels through the subcontinent, and in the process they hope to raise money for Indian children’s charity ‘ASHA For Education’...
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Painting Techniques: Chalk Pastel Portraits
Autumn 2008 issue
Starting a pastel portrait
A portrait begins with an informal sitting with the subject, where I like to develop a rapport and learn something of the person's interests. This helps me to try and bring something of their character to the image, and identify any consistent features in their appearance which will make them easily identifiable. The sitting will also involve making some preparatory sketches, or taking a series of photographs to develop the work at home...
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Art Alfresco: Christopher Le Brun and the Bergh Apton Sculpture Trail
Summer 2008 issue
Across East Anglia, artists are gearing up to lay on some of the most outstanding art exhibitions in the country. Art lovers can enjoy not only the counties’ Open Studios but also events such as the Bergh Apton Sculpture Trail, Salthouse 08, and the Harleston and Waveney Art Trail...
More about Christopher Le Brun
More about Bergh Apton Sculpture Trail
More about Salthouse
More about Harleston and Waveney Art Trail

Behind the Scenes - Landscape Painters Jane Lewis, Rachel Lockwood,
Roo Sangster-Bullers and Simon Carter
Summer 2008 issue
When Chris Dobrolowski created Landscape Escape No 2 as part of London’s 2005 Young Masters exhibition, this Suffolk artist clearly had something he was itching to say. His exhibit – a fully functioning flame-throwing tank made from lawn mower parts covered with reproduction Constable paintings – engendered numerous interpretations, one of which was that mankind should reflect more deeply on the way it treats its cultural and artistic heritage and by extension, the landscape...
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The Truly Surreal World of Rinat Baibekov
Summer 2008 issue
It’s like a Harry Potter story – zoom in on an ordinary English street, pull up to an ordinary English red brick house, slip through the open doorway, and suddenly you’re in a most extra-ordinary living room, sipping tea with an artist of aristocratic blood whilst around you countless surrealistic paintings glow with a mesmerizing effervescence...
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Julia Cake: Stunning Sculptures
Spring 2008 issue
With her stone sculpture, Performance, now on display in the foyer of the newly-refurbished Norwich Theatre Royal in Norfolk, Monaco-born sculptress Julia Cake has taken the first step in launching her career in the UK. Her Norfolk home is surrounded by blocks of stone waiting to be transformed into the tactile forms for which she is known overseas, and clouds of dust can be seen billowing from her studios from early morning to late evening. What is less apparent when meeting this soft-spoken woman, is the gritty determination that preceded her arrival on English shores.
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James Maberly: Cry Freedom
Spring 2008 issue
Tuesday, May 27, 1986 was a day that would change artist James Maberly forever.
One moment he was the manager of Botswana United Transport, a company which ran
a fleet of trucks between Zimbabwe and Botswana, the next he was being accused of harbouring weapons of war.
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Graham Chaplin: Into The Dragon's Den
Spring 2008 issue
Step into Stowmarket’s Ironoak Forge and hold your breath, for there, surrounded by some of the most ancient tools still used by modern man, you will probably be greeted by a giant apparition or two. A partially completed elf balancing on a cart wheel, perhaps? Or an enormous and impressively muscular other-worldly creature. Or, for something a little different, an abstract sculpture finessed from fine lines of steel, wire, copper and iron.
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Douglas Farthing: A Soldier's Tale
Spring 2008 issue
When Suffolk artist Douglas Farthing retired in June 2007 after 23 years in the armed forces’ parachute regiment, he had a war diary of images he was able to develop into a rapidly expanding collection of oil, watercolour, and pen and ink paintings. Today, these paintings hang in a small, new gallery at the Henstead Art & Craft Centre at Henstead, near Southwold in Suffolk. They cover Douglas’ years in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans; he is working backwards through his tours of duty.
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Robin Welch: Raw Power
Winter 2007 issue
The writer first came to know Robin Welch as an organic vegetable gardener, a man who loves to work with the earth; then as a walker, a man who walks out over the undulating Suffolk landscapes contemplating the moods of the approaching weather. Finally he came to know of him as a potter, a man who once upon a time had produced many utilitarian pieces for the home and table but who now sculpts and paints clay....
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Mary Gundry: Paintings From The Heart
Winter 2007 issue
If there is one contemporary Suffolk artist whose star appears to have risen as fast as the town she paints, that artist is Mary Gundry. A figurative water colourist, Mary Gundry’s now-familiar idyllic images of children playing on Southwold beach and crabbing in the shallows of neighbouring Walberswick can be found on cards, calendars and mugs throughout the region. What is less known outside Southwold is that her family portraits are on countless East Anglian living room walls, commissioned by parents eager to capture their offspring’s childhood...
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Will Teather: Artist-in-Residence Back from Aberdeen
Winter 2007 issue
When Norwich artist Will Teather travelled north to Scotland to take up his artist-in-residency position at the Aberdeen Art Centre, he expected it to be cold and wet. It was. Although, in fairness, the sun did come out for his arrival. He also expected the experience to help him develop his art, which it also did, but most of all he hoped it would provide him with some publicity. And this it most certainly did, beyond expectation. The Aberdeen Art Centre publicity machine was so effective, in fact, that at one stage the keywords ‘Will Teather’ were said to have been at the top of the most searched words on a local website...
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Bruer Tidman: Mastering Emotions
Autumn 2007 issue
The instant appeal of Brüer Tidman’s work is his wonderful use of colour. There is no doubt he is a very accomplished colourist and often on a grand scale, as at the Salthouse 07 exhibition where his golden canvas of 8 feet by 16 feet dominated the entrants’ view....
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Katherine Hamilton: Off the Mayan Trail
Autumn 2007 issue
Guatemala: A nation notorious for its drug crimes, corruption, lack of human rights, and murders. Hardly the usual destination for a genteel woman armed only with a sketch book, paints and a fistful of U.S. dollars. And yet it was to this South American country that Suffolk artist Katherine Hamilton set out in 2005, dressed ‘like an old scarecrow’ in order to look as ‘revolting’ and uninteresting as possible, determined to pass through Guatemala City unnoticed so that her real journey, into the Western Highlands, could begin....
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Jude Lockie: Respecting the Fine Line (Japanese Woodblock)
Autumn 2007 issue
‘The foundation of all good woodblock printing rests upon the perfection of drawing and printing, of colour and line. These are truly essential, yet it is also true that the artist must see the end from the beginning.’....
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HJ Jackson: Linoprints
Autumn 2007 issue
H.J. Jackson, Senior Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, first cut lino as part of a school art lesson, and in 1954 that little print of a galleon in full sail helped him to obtain a place at the Norwich Art School. He presented this print at the interview and the graphics tutor, Geoffrey Wales (himself a wood engraver), honed in on it, pronouncing, ‘You will do linocutting as a craft.’....
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Martin Mitchell: Mezzotints
Autumn 2007 issue
Fifty miles from Jude Lockie’s studio, Norwich-based artist Martin Miitchell focuses not on woodblock but on mezzotints to produce his prints. Mezzotints start their life as copper plates. A curved serrated tool, a rocker, is used to engrave thousands of tiny, evenly placed, dots into the plate; these will hold the ink and produce a deep velvet dark tone. ’....
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Exploring Colin Moss
Summer 2007 issue
Painter Colin Moss often appeared as the epitome of a well dressed and tidy Englishman and yet, if a movie were ever made about him, Hollywood would probably be tempted to dress him in a beard, boots and beret. Green Pebble explores the life of one of Ipswich’s most respected mid-20th Century artists....
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Bruer Tidman, John Kiki, Bridget Heriz, Emrys Parry & Katarzyna Coleman
'Location Location Location'
Spring 2007 issue
In January 2007, five artists gathered at the King’s Head for a few drinks and three helpings of chips to discuss the influence of their town, Great Yarmouth, on their work.....
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Thomas Gainsborough, John Constable & Frost
'A Gainsborough in Every Hedge and Hollow Tree'
Spring 2007 issue
Two of Britain's greatest painters, John Constable and Thomas Gainsborough, were born within ten miles of eachother on the river Stour, but 50 years apart. Both were landscape painters deeply inspired by their native Suffolk countryside. And although they never met, theirs lives would be inexorably linked through the influence of local Ipswich artist, George Frost......
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