coming soon

SENSING PLACE. Bridport Arts 18 April- 6 June 2026

A solo exhibition of ‘place palettes’, sketchbooks and paintings made along the Jurassic coastline over the last 20 years. Sensing Place focuses on Frances Hatch’s process as a plein air painter and the ‘place palettes’ she makes at Dorset coastal locations using found earths, clays, organic matter and man-made materials like litter. Accompanied by written and painted notes, the palettes become portraits of place that inform her paintings, a small number of which will be on show in the exhibition. Working outside and combining these found materials with water-based media, such as watercolour, acrylic and gouache, Frances allows the weather – rain, snow, humidity, wind, sun – to participate in the shaping of the work. Infused with the geology of each place, traces of weather, circumstance and happenstance, the palettes and paintings are witness to and a record of time spent with the ever-changing Jurassic coast. This body of work contributes to the 25th anniversary year celebrations of its status as a World Heritage Site.

booking now live for the events below:

SENSING PLACE:
Frances Hatch – Artist’s Talk
Sat 18 Apr, 11am-12pm

Join artist Frances Hatch in the gallery for a tour of the exhibition. Booking essential.

SENSING PLACE:
Drawing With West Bay
Thu 30 Apr, 11am-2pm

Join artist Frances in West Bay on a guided drawing walk, recording the sights, sounds and materials of the Jurassic coast. Booking essential.

SENSING PLACE:
Painting the Weather in West Bay
Wed 20 May, 11am-2pm

Supported by Frances, participants will create small scale paintings of the light, atmosphere and weather with an option to include found materials. Booking essential.

The Jurassic Coast spans 155 km between Orcombe Point in East Devon to Old Harry Rocks in Dorset and displays 185 million years of Earth’s history. In 2001 the Jurassic Coast was awarded World Heritage Site Status. This year we mark the 25th Anniversary of inscribing the Jurassic Coast on the World Heritage List. ‘Sensing Place’ opens on 18th April, designated as World Heritage Day.

view current SEASONAL PORTFOLIO

praise poems – seasonal narratives- containers of experience

WHERE TO SEE WORK

BANKSIDE GALLERY

Gallery Hours Open daily, 11am – 6pm

Free Admission & always work on line and available.

Bankside Gallery, London: Bankside Gallery always has work on line and in stock.

KEVIS HOUSE. Lombard Street, Petworth, West Sussex, GU28 0AG

new work: view in the gallery and online

BEACH CANVAS for Frances Hatch

She is open to the open air -

a painter kneeling

on bonfire-blackened shingle

mixed with debris the sea has tossed up.

Rain won’t deter her.

Quite the contrary:

it too will be something to hand,

softening surfaces, seeping in.

She works with stuff

that is all a meeting and a mixing:

greensand, gault, lias

this present moment

with geological ages

on the Jurassic coast.

Paint encounters earth

fallen from cliffs,

plant life, flotsam, all

the material makings of place.

As she anchors her canvas

with a rock and light flashes

where the cliff torn with a fall

catches the sun, I want to tell her

what her art means to me.

I could put it simply

and it would be true.

What she brings me into,

quickened with imagination,

is the living world.

But is that enough?

We need words that glow with inner light:

Words that come with a touch

of life that makes them what they are –

life of flesh and spirit,

and not with colour daubed on,

but with the inner glow

that is energy,

the vibrant flower

and the mud it grows in.

What she reveals,

what I seek to speak of,

is place renewed,

broken shore and wave breaking

here, at this moment, all the instability

of the land we live on and love.

Jeremy Hooker. June 2023

included in PRELUDES poems by Jeremy Hooker. Shearsman Books 2024