Get along to Devon Open Studios

Over 200 artists working across Devon are throwing open their doors and waiting to welcome you to their unique workspaces this month during Devon Open Studios, which runs from 7th to 22nd September. 

There is so much to explore; painting and printmaking, ceramics and textiles, sculpture, jewellery, photography and more. We’re proud to sponsor this spectacular event once again.

Devon Open Studios is a unique opportunity to meet artists in their studios in some of the most beautiful, unexplored parts of Devon. In addition to being able to buy art direct from the creator, many demonstrate, give talks or give you a chance to have a go.

In 2012 over 300 artists took part in 160 locations across the county. Artists are able to show their artwork, exactly as they wish, whilst retaining 100% of their sales.

A free event guide is available by post or online showing all the artists and venues, colour coded by area, so you can plan a tour of the studios that interest you. And if you need a place to stay, take a look at our holiday cottages in Devon available during the event.

You can also find Devon Open Studios on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

The Start of Something Beautiful – Emerging Artists Win Bursaries

From watercolourist Samuel Prout and Rococo painter Francis Hayman, Devon has a history of producing great artists. Five emerging Devon-based artists (pictured right with our Adrian) have just been awarded for their talent with bursaries from Helpful Holidays, through a scheme with Devon Artists Network.

The bursaries are aimed at those entering professional arts practice for the first time, returning to creative practice after a career break or change, or currently taking their art in a new direction. This year’s winners represent a range of disciplines.

Wanda Gardner, a printmaker from Crediton, had been an art teacher for thirty six years. The bursary will enable her to focus on her return to her art. She said: “I loved teaching and had a long and useful career working, mostly with Deaf children and young adults,” explained Wanda, “However, I feel truly fortunate and excited about receiving the bursary as I see it as a launching pad for a second career that I always yearned for when I trained as an art teacher many years ago.”

Mixed media artist Suzie Waldron, from Totnes, graduated from University College Falmouth in 2012 and has been Artist-in-Residence at Totnes Art and Design Foundation Course. She said: “I was determined that during this year I would push myself out of my comfort zone, and not just treat the residency as an extension of my degree. Though my current paintings are very much informed by my previous work, I feel that I have entered new territory and become more confident in my practice.” Her exhibition for Devon Open Studios 2013 will be the culmination of her year-long residency in Totnes.

Bovey Tracey-based painter Jane Hodgson focuses on landscape. Her travels as well as her time in Devon have shaped her work, concentrating as she does on Antipodes - two points on the globe that if one passes a needle through the middle of the earth, would be linked.

Ama Menec, from Totnes, falls into the ‘new direction’ category of the bursary awards. She has recently begun a new direction in her work by casting her sculpture in bronze and experimenting with new materials after working as a ceramicist.

Mixed media artist Naomi Hart is currently working on a participatory artwork and installation on the theme of 'Migration'. She plans to send out 10,000 bird-shaped postcards all over the world and people will colour them in or write a message and post them back to me, completing their 'migration'. Each postcard will be tracked and participants can view the progress and exhibition online via a dedicated website and social media. The installation will be hung to coincide with Devon Open Studios 2013 and will be free to visit.

Devon Open Studios is the largest annual art event in the county attracting more than 20,000 visits to around 175 artists’ studios each year. The 2013 event takes place 7-22 September 2013.

To find yourself a holiday cottage base ahead of the event, go to www.helpfulholidays.com.

Let Devon’s artists show you around the county…

Get creative with your exploration of the West Country and take part in Devon Open Studios - the largest annual arts event in Devon, which runs from 8th to 23rd September. It offers visitors a unique opportunity to see the artist in their own habitat – watch them work, buy their art direct or try their medium yourself in some of the most beautiful, unexplored parts of Devon.

Helpful Holidays is sponsoring the event for another year and has again funded five places through the Emerging Artist Bursary initiative, which aims to nurture and encourage new talent to take the next steps in their career.

Adrian Innocent, our marketing manager, met the bursary winners at Lee Wood Small Holding - a centre linking people with the land through art. The winning artists’ work covers many disciplines from furniture and print making to painting, ceramics and installations.

Watch Adrian talk about our involvement with Devon Open Studios here:

Each winner has also prepared a video. Shelley Castle takes inspiration from her workspace – an extraordinary hexagonal game larder on the Flete Estate in south Devon, where she is artist in residence. Birds and feathers feature heavily in her work, as she explains.

Stephen Bennett is a writer, poet and potter. He incorporates text in his ceramics and the Devon Open Studios will showcase his expressive ceramic heads.

Fi Smart hopes to increase public awareness of printmaking when they visit her studio in west Devon. She is particularly interested in the different processes involved in producing various types of prints and the endless ways they can be combined and modified.

Peter Lanyon combines traditional fine furniture making skills with modern tools and technologies. The shape of the bench you see in his video gives an indication of the resulting style.

Hilary O'Dwyer will hold her open studio at Bicton eaRTH Centre. The wood used for her sculptures undergoes a burning process for preservation.

Take a look at our Devon holiday cottages available during the event, and then use this map and the free event guide to plan which studios you’d like to visit. 

Bookings made via the Devon holiday cottages link on this blog or via the link on the Devon Artist Network website will help fund the Open Studios event next year.

Countdown to Devon Open Studios 2011…

As part of our sponsorship of Devon Open Studios we’re supporting five impressive artists as part of their Emerging Artist Bursary Scheme. We’ve already profiled Kirstie Benbow, Melanie Beer and Amy McCarthy – here we take a look at Nigel Waters and Francesca Dawson.

Nigel Waters is a painter working within the mediums of painting and photography. Interested in modern British and American culture from 1950 to the present, he describes his sculptural paintings as “a creative response to a setting using partly observed and partly automatic mark making.”

Nigel works with people with disabilities and his work reflects his interest in the tactile nature of art as a multi-dimensional impression rather than the conventional visual format.

“These visual perceptions include light, colour, overlayed forms and peripheral reflections which altogether create a complex multi-layered image.”

The bursary will enable Nigel to put on an exhibition to generate sales and this in turn will fund his next body of work. He would also like to further develop his skills by taking an MA at art college. See Nigel talking about his work and winning the bursary on YouTube.

Nigel’s work can be seen at Exeter Northcott Theatre, Stocker Road, Exeter, EX4 4QB.

Francesca Dawson (L) with Helen Hayes from Helpful Holidays

Francesca Dawson graduated with a first class BA (Hons) Fine Art in 2007 and currently manages an art gallery (Gloss) in Exeter and creates her work in her spare time. Her passion is for drawing, and she is currently producing a series of pieces influenced by a selection of the Grimm’s fairytales including The Seven Ravens and The Fox and the Wolf.

She explains: “I have used the traditional characters as inspiration and have adapted them to suit a contemporary audience as I believe their stories have a universal appeal.”

Francesca is also greatly inspired by fashion photography and illustration which is evident in the female characters she portrays. Her work conveys a juxtaposition between beauty and subtle macabre, through visual narratives using various drawing and mixed media.

The critical feedback that she hopes to receive from the visitors to her show will help her develop as an exhibiting artist and the bursary will be a great help towards the cost of hosting her exhibition. See Francesca talking about her work and winning the bursary on YouTube.

Francesca’s work can be seen at The Granary, Oxton, Kenton, Exeter, EX6 8EX.

If you’re in Exeter on 1st September, it’s well worth attending the launch of Devon Open Studios 2011 at Exeter Northcott Theatre. See details below:

Running from 3rd to 18th September, Devon Open Studios is a great opportunity to meet and chat with artists and see the creative process first hand.

A free event guide is available by post or online showing all the artists and venues, colour coded by area, so you can plan a tour of the studios that interest you. And if you need a place to stay, take a look at our holiday cottages in Devon available during the event.

You can also link up with Devon Open Studios on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Meet the artists during Devon Open Studios…



Painting by Melanie Beer

Any art lovers amongst you will recall our post back in June on our sponsorship of Devon Open Studios again this year. In this post, we’re delighted to introduce two more of the five impressive artists we’re supporting as part of their Emerging Artist Bursary Scheme.

Kirstie Benbow is a recently self-employed artist who is a part-time Fine Art student at Plymouth College of Art. Since starting the course, her inspiration has changed from design-led, designer/maker crafts, to emotionally-fed conceptual art. Her range is wide – there are few visual art forms not now represented in her work: wire and shredded paper forms, sculpted female figures, horses, humorous three-dimensional birds….

Kirstie says “It has been a fascinating process, to move from printmaking and textiles to painting, a new discipline for me, focusing on the use of colour (mainly oils) in abstract garden themes. I hope to take painting forward into my professional practice, backed up by my history of printmaking, textiles and sculpture.”

Printmaking remains Kirstie’s ‘lead’ discipline. Again, she is inspired by gardens and hedgerows, using recycled materials, dried plant stems and seed heads, dead insects and other finds from her garden. The delicate monotype images she creates are strongly evocative of seasons and emotions past.



You can see Kirstie’s work at Heathfield Farm, Heathfield Road, Denbury, Newton Abbot TQ12 6ES.

Melanie Beer paints with acrylics using loose brush strokes to capture her local land and seascape in a painterly, impressionistic style. She has also recently begun to work with fused glass to create the movement, colour and flow of the ocean and has several commissions. Melanie says “The challenge for me is to capture nature’s tranquillity with light colour and texture. This bursary from Devon Open Studios has given me a great opportunity to reach a wider audience and get my career off to a head start.”

You can see Melanie’s work at Sunnybank, Cudhill Road, Brixham, TQ5 9JQ.

Running from 3rd to 18th September, Devon Open Studios is a great opportunity to meet and chat with artists and see the creative process first hand.

A free event guide is available by post or online showing all the artists and venues, colour coded by area, so you can plan a tour of the studios that interest you. And if you need a place to stay, take a look at our holiday cottages in Devon available during the event.

You can also link up with Devon Open Studios on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Celebrating artistic talent in Devon…

Did you know that Devon has more working artists than any other county in the UK? From 3rd to 18th September 2011, the Devon Open Studios project, with over 370 artists exhibiting in 146 venues, creates an ideal opportunity for art lovers to visit Devon. You can meet the artists in their studios and even see them in action. It’s a phenomenally successful venture - there were over 25,000 studio visits during last year’s event – and we’re delighted to be sponsoring the project again this year.

For 2011, we’re also proud to support their Emerging Artist Bursary Scheme to help fresh talent develop their young careers. Our bursaries are going to the five impressive artists below who express their creativity through a variety of media, ranging from photography and mosaics to crayon:

• Amy McCarthy - glass (pictured)
• Kirstie Benbow - mixed media
• Melanie Beer – painting and glass
• Nigel Waters – mixed media
• Francesca Dawson – drawings

We’ll take a closer look at each of these five artists over the coming weeks, starting with Amy McCarthy. Amy’s stained glass and mixed media is inspired by the beautiful Devon landscape and she produces striking, simple designs which reflect her love of colour. Waste glass and recycled or found objects are incorporated in to her mixed media mosaics which have been exhibited around the South West.

Amy set up an online shop and art glass studio in 2009 after a career in mental health. In a remarkably short time, she has built up a thriving studio with a steady stream of commissions and a busy exhibition diary.

Recycling and environmental art are a dominant passion; last summer she won ‘South West Water’s Artist Prize’ for a large public sculpture that utilised an old bath and discarded glass to create a vibrantly coloured sail boat cruising on a mosaic sea! She intends to create more large sculptures by casting recycled glass. This is a very experimental area of glass art and she’s keen to develop her skills in enamelling, fusing and slumping glass by investing in a kiln for her studio.

The bursary will help Amy with the cost of a gazebo to exhibit her work in this year’s exhibition and with the preparation and promotion of her private view event.

You can watch Amy demonstrate her technique in this video – as you’ll see, her creations are full of colour and vigour and we can’t wait to see more of her work throughout the year.

View our holiday cottages in Devon to book a cultural break in September and follow the studio trail to visit some of the most beautiful, unexplored parts of this county.

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