Friday meetings
SWAS meet on the 3rd Friday of the month at Katherine Semar School, Ross Close, Saffron Walden CB11 4DU. The hall is open from 7pm. We start promptly at 7.30pm, finishing at 9.30pm. Entrance is £2 for members and guests are warmly welcomed, £5.
We have a refreshment break, with tea or coffee provided. There is an opportunity to see the artist’s work close up and to socialise with members and friends. Members can also borrow books from the Saffron Walden Art Society library, available at Friday meetings.5
Click on the pictures below if you would like to see the artists website, if they have one.
2026
Friday 15th May, Caz Clark, Vibrant acrylic - flowers
Caroline’s art is based on three ideals – joy of colour, the process of painting and gratitude for what is around her. She loves colour and the relationship we have with it – the way it makes you feel and memories it invokes. Her palette is often bright and cheerful, and enjoys looking at shape and patterns and the relationship they have with each other on the canvas. “I mainly use acrylic for its immediacy as well as using other mixed media to develop each individual piece until there is balance and cohesion. The process of painting makes me happy and I find that if I have been indoors for too long, I have to trudge off into the fields with my easel and a canvas under my arm; it makes me feel like myself again”.
Friday 19th June, Giulia Quaresima, An approach to drawing hands
Giulia’s artistic activity focuses on figurative subjects, particularly portraits and the human form; in the last couple of years she has deepened her love for drawing, and now mostly works using coloured pencils and charcoal, a combination of materials able to express perfectly the feeling behind her inspiration, made of memories, personal experiences, and unspoken emotions. "In the middle of my drawing process, I like scratching the surface and making marks with sand paper, in order to create a more uneven surface to draw on and to give a general movement to the composition. Only few details are on focus, while everything else is just a blur. This personal technique I developed allows me to give the viewer the illusion that my sitters are either emerging or disappearing in this vortex of lines. In order to reveal these lines, I have to start dancing with my hands on the paper, dragging the charcoal powder around the surface till it gets inside the marks I created. It's only at that stage that they become visible. I like to see this moment as a sort of performance art, probably influenced by my love for dancing, and my past as a dance teacher".
Friday 17th July, Seb Aplin, Watercolour - Still Life
Seb’s work incorporates everyday 21st century objects and scenes with techniques drawn from the great Masters. His carefully limited palette and compositions seek to draw out a different, nuanced way of seeing. During the RWS Contemporary Watercolour Exhibition, his piece Self Portrait with Cleaning Products won our Jackson’s Artist prize. Seb has a tendency to look for a calm order and rhythm in his still life. He really enjoys the unbalanced nature of the drawings and would like to introduce more of that dynamism into my painting. “I’m also looking at Cezanne and Picasso among others to see how composition can be separated from subject matter. I think that composition is a reflexion of a state of mind that you have to work at to change in any coherent way. Sometimes I have to try out several compositions in the production of a painting before settling on one that fits”.
Friday 21st August, Sarah Allbrook, Oil - Landscape
Sarah began painting ‘en plein air’ (in the open air) at the end of 2017 and now primarily produces work this way, in a contemporary impressionistic style, using oils. She is inspired by my surroundings and strives to capture the essence of the moment she is witnessing in a place, at different times of day and through the changing seasons, often completing the paintings in one session. Sarah loves the thrill of painting out on location- the excitement of the light, changing skies, people coming and going, and trying to put down in paint an atmosphere of a scene, in a very limited period of time. “I favour oils for the creamy texture, rich colours and variety of marks that can be made, from washes and thinly scraped back brushstrokes, to fluid and thick impasto textures”. Sarah lives and paints in and around Cambridge and the Fens, but also very much enjoys painting at the coast and other rural locations in East Anglia, and sometimes further afield.
Friday 18th September, Teresa Seals, Pastel - Pets
It was a Suffolk Coastal life-drawing class that re-ignited Teresa’s passion for drawing and painting followed by the ‘Beast from the East’ storm of 2018 enabling four ‘snow-days’ from school and leading to her picking up the soft pastels for the first time. “I was in love with this vibrant tactile medium from the very first stroke of the pastel stick on the paper!” Hundreds of pastel paintings and multiple commissions later, Teresa is now a full time artist working almost daily from her tranquil garden studio. “As an artist, my main objective is to capture the likeness and personality of my subjects. A pastel portrait has a dynamic three-dimensional quality that far surpasses the static flatness a photograph can have. I love the tactile nature of working with soft pastel and the way that, by rubbing each layer onto the paper, I almost ‘stroke’ the subject into life. Particularly drawn to wildlife and animal portraits, I focus on bringing character and life to each of my artworks. Pet and family member commissions are always a privilege to complete!”
Friday 16th October, Alice Thomson, Mixed Media, the urban environment
Living and working in Cambridge, Alice’s work is inspired by this beautiful city, and surrounding countryside. Her response to the landscape, coast and architecture is expanded for experimenting with drawing and painting. With a degree in Illustration from Harrow Art College, Alice’s work developed as 'reportage' drawing directly and spontaneously from life. She carries a sketchbook and camera constantly with her, and aims to capture a place and its essence. “I use effortless but sensitive use of line, mark making and colour with an expressive quality. Experimenting with different techniques and materials with no strict rules, I enjoy looking for new and surprising effects. I work in a combination of collage, ink, printing, crayons and paints, (gouache oil and acrylic) sticks and pencils to add layers to add interest to my compositions until it feels complete. My work speaks of the sense of places”.
Friday 20th November, John Tookey ROI, Watercolour
SWAS member, John, has an extremely successful painting career and is also an experienced and enthusiastic teacher. He works in several mediums, but mainly in watercolour, oil and pastel and is justly famous for his dynamic bold watercolours that sparkle with light. He tries to capture the essence of the subject rather than a very topographical likeness. He will frequently work on-site or from sketches completed at the scene, the effects of light and atmosphere on a subject particularly interest him. John was trained in Graphic Design and Fine Art at the Sir John Cass School of Art, London during the sixties when lecturers included David Graham, Edward Hall and Vivian Pitchforth.
2027
Friday 15th January, Tansey Lee Moir, Expressive Charcoal
ZOOM
Tansy grew up in the Peak District in the UK. She learned about trees from her woodturner father and learned to draw what she saw from some inspiring early teachers. She made Scotland her home 30 years ago and, after a rewarding career channelling her creativity into community projects, she turned that energy towards drawing again. Over the last 15 years she has established herself as an artist with a deep connection to the natural world, creating a body of work which resonates both visually and emotionally. ‘As I draw an old tree I’m struck by a powerful feeling of my being a short-lived creature amongst ancients. An ancient oak may have lived five centuries before the moment I draw it and continue another five centuries after I leave. ‘Tree-time’ is very different to our own.’
Friday 19th February, Paul Berryman, Oil - A Human Connection
Paul is a self-confessed Portrait and life-drawing junkie, his work invariably revolves around capturing the human face and figure. “I prefer the challenge of working from life, and am lucky enough to do so regularly”. Although my style is very likeness orientated, I do covet reducing an image to the barest form in which it can still give the viewer a pinch of the "wow" factor.