Anke: Royal Tunbridge Wells

BBC Question Time

Today the game show that is BBC Question Time rolled into town. Suffice to say I was more interested in the rather cool trucks setting up the show.

Look out for some of our friends and neighbours tonight on television, in the meantime scroll on down a bit more for a sneak behind the scenes shot of the set going up.

This embedded image is courtesy of Trinity Theatre.

Being Human Exhibition

Took a break from the torrential rain today and popped into the art gallery at Trinity Church to see the exhibition of the work of local artist Debbie Jew. Debbie's portraits are painted in oil and the series on display here explores "the various methods of dealing with or overcoming life's obstacles."

Self-portrait of the artist. Go see the exhibition to read why some of it is black and white.

The faces and expressions on the paintings have a wonderful haunting realism to them and really follow you around the room. The textures and colours used really brighten the room which is probably quite opposite from the feelings that the characters in the images are feeling. Well worth a visit during your lunch hour or this weekend with the family. The exhibition is on until the 6th of November.

Heather Withers' Colourful Wells

With an hour to spare after lunch we decided to pop into Trinity Theatre's Gallery for a look at the latest exhibition, People and Places by Heather Withers, for if there is one thing I cannot resist it's a piece of Tunbridge Wells art.

Our new art acquisition, titled Pantiles I.

Boy, were we in for a treat when we walked into the gallery, our eyes were taken by an absolute riot of colour. Beautiful scenes of The Pantiles had been treated to Heather's bold, loose technique of applying rich, vibrant washes of colour to textured paper giving each image an extra level of depth. Familiar vistas around town, interspersed with street scenes of Brighton, had been given bold new perspectives and really made us stop and gaze into the scenes before us, the richness of the colour gave the images a dynamic life of their own and had us captivated for quite some time.

In fact we were so taken that after an enjoyable ten minutes wandering around all the work we decided that we wanted to take one home. We were in two minds about which one we wanted and after asking a few friends on Twitter, it was the headline image from the promotional material of the exhibition that won the day.

It's a fabulous image, not just for it's especially rich colouration but for its great sense of movement and perspective. Unfortunately I have to leave it in Trinity for a couple of weeks for everyone else to enjoy so please pop along and have a look if you can.

We were so intrigued by the exhibition that I had to drop Heather an e-mail to ask her about her work. She was kind enough to answer my questions, here is her reply:

You say in your bio that Tunbridge Wells provided a new inspiration, what was it about our town that attracted you to paint it?
"I'm afraid I have to admit that I had not visited Tunbridge Wells until I was invited (about a year ago) to have a solo show at the Trinity Gallery.

During the year my husband Jeff and I made several trips to your wonderful town - there are so many great places and subjects to paint in TW as we discovered whilst walking around the town, but I always somehow found myself drawn back to the Pantiles, where I was really inspired to paint the buildings, cafés and of course, the people. We made several visits during the summer months, where I spent time eating out at the cafés/sitting outside the Duke of York Pub 'people watching' and sketching, and collecting ideas for my paintings."

The Gallery in Trinity Theatre.

Where did you get the inspiration for the wonderful addition of vibrant colour to your paintings?
"I had wanted to set the scene for my summer paintings using vibrant, warm washes - I was trying to convey the mood and atmosphere of warm, sunny, summer days - with people enjoying themselves eating and drinking alfresco at busy street cafés. We also made several trips during the winter months - visiting the market stalls/listening to the brass band playing - which inspired my paintings "Winter Market" and "The Corn Exchange".
I enjoy painting in a loose, impressionistic style, exploiting the many unique qualities that watercolour has to offer - its translucency, the marks and textures, using wet into wet, lost and found techniques and mixing and merging colours directly on the paper."

Thanks to Heather Withers for the interview and the kind permission to use images of her work here. The exhibition is open from 10am - 3pm (Mon-Sat) and at performance times at Trinity Theatre. If you have a spare 15 minutes in your lunch hour or this weekend then drop on by and let me know what you think.

Snow in Tunbridge Wells

Christmas spirit is well and truly here in Royal Tunbridge Wells today, with the lovely drifts of white snow dropped onto us overnight. Here are just a few of the images I took out on my walk around town this morning, click here or any of the photos below to be taken to the rest of the gallery so you can see them nice and large. Enjoy!

Also, if these pictures have made you feel in the Christmas mood, then why not top it off with a trip to the panto? The wife and I were graciously invited to the press night of Trinity's Christmas Carol. Mostly in thanks for my production of their Christmas Card, which you must buy if you go there.

The panto was as you would expect, brilliant, much more of your traditional play rather than the modern trash with its musical numbers and audience participation. More one for the adults and older kids as it tries to stick as close to the feeling of the scary and dark original as possible. Please go and support Trinity and have some fun at the same time.

Stained Christmas at Trinity

I had the great privledge a few weeks ago to be invited to Trinity Church to shoot a photograph for their 2009 charity Christmas card. It turned out to be a rare honour indeed as the shot was to be of the great stained glass window behind the stage, something that very few people get to see, at least from the inside.

After a brief tour behind the scenes in the projection room I was left alone in the dark with the great window before me,which had been revealed by lots of hard work by the staff in peeling back most of the stage and workings. For a while I found it quite tranquil to stand in the darkened empty theatre and look into the bright coloured glass and contemplate my shot. But I was there to do a job so I then set about photographing all the intricate details of the windows, which I thought could also act as a historical record seeing as though the window spends most of its life hidden.

As you can see from the photographs here, which are like the one on the Trinity charity Christmas card, the colours are amazing and in stark contrast from the view outside.

The window was created by Joseph Hale Miller, who was one of the pioneers of the revival of medieval techniques of stained glass design and construction in the early 19th century, that is the process of piecing together bits of coloured glass with strips of lead rather than just painting the glass.

I feel very proud of my photographs and am very grateful to the staff of Trinity in allowing me the chance to shoot the window so please consider popping into Trinity this Christmas to buy a few of your cards for friends and family, although don't get one for me, I have enough :)

For a couple more pictures of the window, including some detailed close-ups, please visit my Flickr page here.