Iris Weaver of The Fry Gallery has kindly written a few words about Colin's work...

"Colin Wilkin is principally landscape watercolour artist in the tradition of Eric Ravilious. He inhabits the same spaces which inspired Ravilious to paint a number of his early watercolours. He also lives, and has done since childhood, in the same part of rural north west Essex. So it is not surprising that when you look at Colin's work one is reminded of that modern master of English watercolour."

Visit our gallery website for further examples of Colin's paintings.

Several extracts were read from book, some accompanied by sound recordist Chris Watson.

Lots of thought provoking content, particularly the last piece - a reading by Michael McCarthy of his book 'Say Goodbye to the Cuckoo'. CBTR's Robin Turner summed up the event...

"As Michael read extracts from his book, slowly a picture unfolded of the UK at an environmental tipping point – one where migratory birds have stopped visiting our shore, where they no longer use them as breeding grounds.

You start to think about what the signifiers of the seasons are – birdsong, flowers budding, fruit and veg reaching maturity… and then you realize that these days, from the vantage point of behind a computer screen in a concrete and glass city centre, you don’t really have any idea of what’s going on past the end of the road anyway. I be surprised if any of us are really sure when spring smudged into summer or what’s seasonal to this country anymore – the supermarkets spreading out a bounty plundered from the four corners of the Earth (do we really need to source asparagus from Kenya? Shouldn’t we just eat it when it’s available here?). I walked away from McCarthy’s talk with a vision of a country suffering from a homogeny of seasons, where Britain’s local distinctiveness has been replaced by shelves stacked with foreign bodies and silences on our village greens and hedgerows. And that really scared me."

I must order a copy of the book. The cover is illustrated by Joe McLaren who we're hoping to work with at St. Jude's in the future.

Frances studied Photography at the Royal College of Art; she exhibits nationally and internationally and has work in Collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Saatchi Collection.

The exhibition is at the Norwich Arts Centre and runs until Monday 31st August, open 10am-6pm.

My new linocut, "Yellow Rattle" is one of the prints I'll be exhibiting.

Graphic designer Littlepixel has 'reimagined' a series of classic record sleeves as if they were vintage Pelican books.

Jon graduated from the University of the West of England in 2007 with a degree in illustration. He now lives in Bristol where he works as a printmaker and freelance illustrator, and contributes comic strips to various publications.

For further examples of his work, please see our website.

"Featuring Laura Barton and Gavin Pretor-Pinney reading their pieces from 'Words On Water' with live sound accompaniment from the great Chris Watson -  a really exciting prospect. We are also showing a short film of the late Roger Deakin in his house and garden. This was made by Mike Dibb as a pitch for a BBC documentary slot. With real short sightedness that slot was never commissioned and this wonderful fifteen minutes of history have sat on Mike’s shelf until their existence came to our attention and we tracked Mike down. We are also honoured to be joined by the authors of two of our current favourite books: Michael McCarthy reads from ‘Say Goodbye to the Cuckoo’  and Andrew Brown reads from ‘Fishing in Utopia’ which has just come out in paperback.  We’ve also got Will Hodgkinson reading from his forthcoming book ‘The Ballad of Britain’ and live music, in the foyer of the QEH, from The Memory Band and friends, who will be performing the soundtrack to The Wicker Man."

For full details and to purchase tickets visit the Southbank Centre website.

On our last morning we had a stunning walk close to Stoer Head lighthouse, built in 1870 by David & Thomas Stevenson. It was only when we got back and did a quick Google search that we found out you can stay at the lighthouse - The National Trust for Scotland have converted the building to provide two apartments. Very tempting.