Participants 2026
Artists Q - Z
Alexander Ramsay - Photography
My working life has been spent photographing carefully styled interiors for magazines all over the world. I'm a little more relaxed about making pictures in these latter days, now that I can choose my subjects.
I could steal Rose Macaulay's famous phrase and call this work the 'Pleasure of Ruins' - but far from the grand imperial remains she sought out, these pictures mostly show the traces left by humbler lives
Venue 21 - Mark Richards Studio, 4 Artisan Row, Broadaxe Business Park, LD8 2BQ
Imogen Reid - Painting
IK Reid exhibits small-scale plein air landscapes, studio oil paintings and drawings.
Her work has been in juried shows including the Discerning Eye, and Royal West of England Academy.
Venue 12 - Blengdale, Ford Street, Stapleton, LD8 2LW
Mark Richards - Multidisciplinary Art
Using drawing, photography and sculpture, Mark Richards draws upon imagery and traditions associated with landscape, religious worship and contemplation.
Venue 21 - Mark Richards Studio, 4 Artisan Row, Broadaxe Business Park, LD8 2BQ
Bob Rowberry - Metalworking
For many years I have developed a quirky range of kinetic ornaments using, as far as possible, recycled metal objects and sometimes feathers, which are designed to be left outside for most of the year.
Powered by the wind, they provide hours of entertainment as they swing and rotate in the breeze. I use wooden bases found in the woodlands surrounding my home to provide stability to the structures.
Venue 2 - Castle Barn, 40A High Street, LD8 2BE
Alice Savery - Painting and Drawing
Alice enjoys celebrating seasonal flora via painting.
With a love of lettering and humour, Alice incorporates this into some of her work.
She has a studio in Brampton Bryan, from which she delivers beginners workshops.
Venue 19 - Presteigne Youth Centre, 44 Hereford St, LD8 2AT
Stephanie Scott - Ceramics
I want to produce beautiful ceramics and pictures which have an organic feel and, as much as possible, have a practical use. (Though sometimes I make reptiles and animals which are purely ornamental).
Whatever I make, I want it to hark back to the natural world, and I use a lot of organic elements to decorate my pieces. I do this through creating texture or by adding impressions and moulds I have made directly from nature.
It is important to me that each piece is unique; the shapes may be similar, but how I decorate them and what I add to each one makes them a one-off.
Venue 19 - Presteigne Youth Centre, 44 Hereford St, LD8 2AT
Celia de Serra - Painting and Drawing
Celia is a contemporary realist artist living and working in mid Wales. She makes semi-photorealistic drawings of landscapes and woodlands - exploring and documenting the often fragile places she knows and cares about - perhaps before they are lost. She builds up layers of detail in her intense drawings, focusing on the effect of light and depth to create a sense of ‘being there’.
Celia studied BA (Hons) Fine Art and English literature at Exeter university and since graduating has exhibited her work widely throughout the UK.
Venue 21 - Mark Richards Studio, 4 Artisan Row, Broadaxe Business Park, LD8 2BQ
Anne Seton-Sykes - Letterpress and Bookbinding
I run a small letterpress and bookbinding workshop, where I make books, boxes and letterpress products.
I studied fine art printmaking as an undergraduate at Glasgow School of Art and as a master’s degree student in Montreal, Canada. During that time, I specialised in artists’ books.
I have always been attracted by the intimacy and historical significance of the book format. More recently, my focus has been on developing my skills as a bookbinder and letterpress printer.
Venue 19 - Presteigne Youth Centre, 44 Hereford St, LD8 2AT
Chris Sheath - Painting
I am self-taught, working mostly in watercolour and oils.
In the process of painting every one of these pieces, I’ve felt deeply the schism between the harmony inherent in nature and the dysfunction of the human world. What I hope has emerged is a reimagining of the world where we to awaken to oneness-with and renounce power-over.
Venue 17 - No. 5 Hereford Street, LD8 2AW
Sharon Hall Shipp - Fine Artist
I work with photography, digital imaging, printmaking, collage and drawing to explore the sense of place and identity. I make 2D work, 3D assemblage forms, artist's books and installations. My practice is informed by my professional background in geography and archaeology.
Venue 3 - Upstairs @ The Salty Dog, 14 High Street LD8 2BA
Richard Shipp - Photography
Presteigne-based photographer exploring coastal, rural and urban landscapes with an emphasis on architecture and the materials used in built environments.
I studied photography in Stevenage and Leeds with medium-format and 35mm cameras before moving to digital imaging in the late 1990s.
My work has been selected for exhibitions at The Glasgow Gallery of Photography, Gareth Gardner Gallery (London) and the Photography Open at the Warrington Contemporary Arts Festival.
I have been selected twice for the Photo Space Gallery’s “Ludlow 7” annual photography competition and have been a participating artist in Oriel Wrecsam’s “Art Vend”.
Venue 3 - Upstairs @ The Salty Dog, 14 High Street LD8 2BA
Mary Smith - Ceramics
Trained as a sculptor, working in various materials, I settled on modelling with clay.
I like variety and make works that interest me, such as my stoneware sculpture focusing on human bodies; detailing heads and hands.
I like the challenge of creating groups or poses difficult to bring through the firing process. In porcelain, I aim for fragile white forms with detailed black decoration. When making more utility type items such as jugs, I aim to create interesting shapes or decoration.
I am delighted when people like my work enough to want to own it.
Venue 8 - ‘Smiths’, Green End, LD8 2DR
Richard Studer - Wood Engraving and Printmaker
My wood engravings celebrate the technique’s origins in book illustration. Storytelling has been my career both in the theatre and as a printmaker.
My engravings are obsessively detailed, many are humorous, while others lead you gently through technique and imagery to deeper questions...
My subject matter is diverse but is often rooted in natural imagery. From ‘An Engraver’s Alphabet – Endangered and Extinct’ to my new series ‘Heads of State’, the work asks the viewer to smile first and think later, so ask me about my work and I will tell you a tale from the woods...
Venue 7 - The Gallery, 4 The High Street, LD8 2BA
Alexa Summers - Multidisciplinary Art
I grew up in rural Worcestershire and wherever I find myself, my internal calendar is inextricably linked to the seasons and flowers of my childhood.
I work in Cyanotype, Coffee, Acrylic, and pen, and love to use plants and flowers foraged from wild places and gardens. I delight in spotlighting the humble weed. I teach Cyanotype Workshops with @foodfriendsflowers in Richards Castle, Ludlow, and enjoy selling my work at Artisan markets, events and places close to home.
My Coffee Art is made with single origin beans as I have been involved with disenfranchised people and coffee growers in Northern Thailand.
Venue 19 - Presteigne Youth Centre, 44 Hereford St, LD8 2AT
Gill Tennant Eyles - Ceramics
I came to clay later in life, via a degree in history, followed by thirty years as an architect, before discovering ceramics on a Foundation Diploma at Hereford College of Art. Once smitten, I was driven to pursue ceramics further, on a degree course at Wolverhampton University's School of Art and Design.
I am continually excited by the potential of clay, and while I draw my creative inspiration from the natural environment, I also like to encourage and emphasise the random effects which are inherent in ceramic processes and materials, and which give an unpredictable and organic character to my work.
www.tennant-eyles-ceramics.co.uk
Venue 4 - Mansion House, 42 High Street, LD8 2BE
Malcolm Turner - Potter
Malcolm is a largely self-taught potter. He worked for many years as a thrower for the French potter Catherine Vanier, but now lives and works here in Presteigne. Most of his work is hand thrown stoneware, but he also makes some larger hand-built raku pieces. He uses innovative glazing techniques which produce some unexpected and fascinating results.
Venue 2 - Castle Barn, 40A High Street, LD8 2BE
Felicity Warbrick - Painting and Drawing
Felicity Warbrick spent her childhood in the Yorkshire Dales. After nearly twenty years in London, she moved to live and work in the Welsh Marches.
She is an image-maker. She takes objects or scenes from the real world, ranging freely across cultures and geographical boundaries in search always of the authentic or handmade. She then re-makes them by homing in, drawing and printing them with such fine attention to their inner character that it is as if she is making them ‘seen' for the first time.
Venue 21 - Mark Richards Studio, 4 Artisan Row, Broadaxe Business Park, LD8 2BQ
Miranda Whitten-Walker - Printmaking
Miranda creates contemporary reduction linocut prints, drypoints, paintings and drawings that celebrate British rural landscapes, especially hill ranges and the life they contain.
Working from both observation and imagination, and often from unusual perspectives, she specialises in detailed multi-layered linocuts that have a painterly quality with varying degrees of abstraction.
Many of her works interpret the marks that humans and natural forces leave on the land, while others represent the nature she finds while roaming the countryside.
Miranda is an emerging, largely self-taught artist and former biologist, and this year’s Artist in Residence at Hergest Croft Gardens in Kington.
Venue 4 - Mansion House, 42 High Street, LD8 2BE