It’s a sunny summer afternoon in a verdant corner of the Essex countryside. A pretty pastoral landscape lies before us, with cattle sheltering in the shade of oak trees, rolling green fields, and a gr

In spring, a beautiful eastern redbud tree (Cercis canadensis), its branches clothed from trunk to tip with cerise-purple flowers, steals the show at Sue Martin’s cottage garden in Cranbrook, Kent. It

Flowers bursting into life in spring herald the dawning of our most hopeful and energising season. Colour returns to trees and life outdoors is full of positivity and joy. While we always pore over th

We’d been living in a Victorian house with high ceilings just a mile away, but we were ready for a change. The house had very little garden, and we wanted to become a lot more self-sufficient by havin

Sandra Busby classes herself as a painter of ‘playful light in glass and still-life'. She finds the majority of her inspiration within the distortions of light on reflective surfaces and much of the o

Objects and props, theatrical lighting and the hint of hidden narratives mark an evolution in Michael Alford’s approach to painting the female nude. With an abiding interest in depicting human figures