The Bishop’s Garden is a historic private four-acre formal city centre garden that has belonged to the Bishops of Norwich for over 900 years and includes 14th-century ruins. The general form of the garden was laid down at least 300 years ago and includes many hidden and historic delights.
“The garden has many hidden delights for visitors such as the large traditional herbaceous borders, a small woodland walk, boxed rose beds, a long shade border with hostas, meconopsis and tree ferns. Also a large wild grass labyrinth, extensive shrubberies containing many rare and unusual plants, among these being a Hebe planted from a sprig taken from Queen Victoria’s wedding bouquet in 1840. There is an organic kitchen garden, bamboo walk…and the garden continues to evolve with new plants and features being introduced year by year.”
Hunworth Hall garden, on 5 Oct 2019 is the fourth of six of Norfolk’s great gardens we are painting in this year as part of a series exploring the draw of the English garden in our cultural and artistic psyche. Whether a cottage garden or a landscaped historic estate they all change through the seasons and our final three gardens are seen through autumnal eyes.
Near Holt and Melton Constable, owners Henry and art historian Charlotte Crawley researched the horticultural heritage of their home and restored its Dutch-style pleasure gardens including flowing lines of sculpted hedged, twin canals, a folly, and extensive topiaried trees cut into balls, cones, and parasols.
Hear Henry describing the garden on the BBC which are partly inspired by the 17th-century Dutch water garden at Westbury Court, Gloucestershire. The garden featured in Country Life, 2013.
Charlotte is also a former Director of the East Anglia Art Fund and has been a Paint Out judge.
Paint Out‘s 2019 plein air exploration of Norfolk’s great gardens and houses continues with Houghton Hall walled garden (14 Sep, 11-5pm) but you could also double-up and do Houghton and Elsing Hall across a weekend 14-15 Sep in Norfolk.
A past winner of Christie’s Historic Houses Association ‘Garden of the Year Award’, the 5-acre walled garden has become one of Houghton’s most popular attractions and is itself surrounded by acres of deer-filled woodland and the sculptures of Henry Moore.
Whether the colour of the plantings, or the architecture of horticultural form, or the statues and fine glasshouse, there are views aplenty to paint.
Karen Adams, ‘The Drive to the Hall’, Houghton
These are available as one-day paintouts for £30 or £100 for the remaining 4 events or all 6 if you’ve already pre-paid for the year.
Other venues include Hunworth Hall garden (5 Oct), Norwich Plantation Garden (15 Oct). Paintings will be exhibited for 11 days following a Private View and Prizegiving 16 October during the Hostry Festival in Norwich.
The space within Houghton Hall’s Walled Garden is divided into several contrasting ‘ornamental gardens’. These include a spectacular double-sided herbaceous border, an Italian garden, a formal rose parterre, fruit and vegetable gardens, a glasshouse, a rustic temple, antique statues, fountains and contemporary sculptures including Jeppe Hein’s “Waterflame”, Stephen Cox’s “Flask II”, and Richard Long’s “Houghton Cross” currently positioned on the croquet lawn.
Houghton Hall, Walled Garden Glasshouse
Historic England entry (somewhat out of date!): KITCHEN GARDEN The 5 acre (c 2ha) walled garden lies c 350m south-west of the Hall behind 3m high red-brick walls (listed grade II).
The interior has been developed over the past five years (1992-7) by the present owner as an ornamental flower, fruit, and vegetable garden and is divided into four compartments by mature yew and beech hedges connected to a late C20 central circle of yew with tree peony beds. Paths of grass and gravel radiate from this, with the long north/south axis defined by double herbaceous borders.
Easel of artist Robert Nelmes painting Houghton
The north-east quarter contains a newly planted (1990s) rose garden with herbaceous areas, yew hedging, a central pool, and four statues, while the north-west quarter is currently (1999) being planned.
The south-east quarter is divided by a newly planted (1990s) pleached hornbeam walk and the north-east quarter planted with old orchard trees in part, new fruit areas in part and an ornamental potager for vegetables.
The walled garden is contemporary with the building of the new hall and stables in the early C18 whilst the internal layout and glasshouses are all of late C20 origin.
Henry Moore statue (1983-4) ‘Mother and Child’ at Houghton Hall
Elsing Hall Gardens on 16 Jun & 15 Sep 2019 is the second of six days painting in several of Norfolk’s great gardens, and this grade I listed rural home has been described as “one of the hidden treasures of East Anglia”. The one-day paint out will take place among the 20-acre estate of the fifteenth-century house and medieval moat near Dereham. In the nineteenth-century, its appearance was recorded in watercolour paintings by Rev James Bulwer now held in the Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery.
Of particular interest in June are the roses in full bloom including:
“a multitude of old English roses that adorn the walls of the house, the walled garden and many borders giving off an almost overpowering scent when in full bloom. Roses in the collection include the famous R. Mme. Alfred Carrier, Vita Sackville West’s favourite R. Souvenir du Dr. Jamain, R. Fantin Latour, R. Cardinal de Richelieu, R. Rambling Rector, R. Ragosa Rosa de l’Hay as well as literally hundreds more.” – Elsing Hall Gardens
Elsing Hall Gardens, Norfolk
The romantic gardens were established over 30 years ago under the direction of Shirley Cargill and have constantly developed ever since in terms of both restoration and innovation. There is a historic hydraulic ram pump that was installed almost 200 years ago and is still housed in its original underground brick pump house accessed by a spiral stairway.
Many other interesting features include the probably unique gingko avenue, the rapidly maturing pinetum, the formal Osprey Garden, the flowing planting around the moat, and densely planted with Lonicera Nitida viewing mound with a spiral path taking one slowly to the summit.
Karen Adams works in large and small scale having exhibited in The Brancaster Staithe Midsummer Exhibition and painted murals for the Brancaster Staithe Sailing Club’s Annual Summer Ball. Her preferred medium is oil painting in which she paints a variety of landscapes but particularly enjoys painting beaches – where she initially encountered and participated in Paint Out Wells first beach sunrise ‘paint out’ in 2015 – marshes and boats in Norfolk, and street scenes. She now travels to paint and continues to grow in consistency and quality securing her first Paint Out prizes in 2017 & 2018.
Paint Out Norwich – selected and participated (2016, 2017)
Paint Out Wells – Artists’ Choice Second Prize (2018), Spirit of Plein Air Award (2017), selected and participated (2015)
Sample Gallery & Works for Sale
Artist Karen Adams, Windpump at Thurne, Thurne, Oil, , £400. Paint Out Norfolk 2020
Artist Karen Adams, The Pier, Cromer, Oil, xin, FOR SALE, £400
Artist Karen Adams, The Pier, Cromer, Oil, xin, £400. Paint Out Norfolk 2020
Artist Karen Adams, Boats in Morning Glitter, Wells-next-the-Sea, Oil, SOLD, £300
Artist Karen Adams, Boats in Morning Glitter, Wells-next-the-Sea, Oil, £300. Paint Out Norfolk 2020
Karen Adams, 'Two Wherries', How Hill, Oil, 18x14in, FOR SALE, £320
Artist: Karen Adams, Title: Two Wherries, Location: How Hill, Media: Oil, Size: 18x14in, £320
Artist Karen Adams, 'Ripples and Splashes', Hunworth Hall, Norfolk, Oil, 18x14in, £270. Paint Out Gardens 2019
Artist Karen Adams, 'Terracotta and Topiary', Hunworth Hall, Norfolk, Oil, 12x10in, SOLD. Paint Out Gardens 2019
Artist Karen Adams, 'Terracotta and Topiary', Hunworth Hall, Norfolk, Oil, 12x10in, £150. Paint Out Gardens 2019
Karen Adams, 'Red Bottomed Boat', Wells, Norfolk, Oil on board, 12x10in, FOR SALE, £180
Artist Karen Adams, 'Red Bottomed Boat', Wells, Norfolk, Oil on board, 12x10in, £180. Paint Out Wells 2017
Karen Adams, 'Over the Top', Wells-next-the-Sea, Oil, 16x12in, FOR SALE, £200
Artist Karen Adams, 'Over the Top', Wells-next-the-Sea, Oil, 16x12in, £200. Paint Out Wells 2018
Paint Out‘s plein air art events and exhibitions in Norfolk, UK, including Great Yarmouth, Holt, Ludham, Wells-next-the-Sea and other North Norfolk coastal towns, Norfolk Broads, seaports, market towns, country houses and gardens. We’ve stretched far and wide across the coast from Hunstanton to Wells and Mundesley down to Happisburgh, Waxham, Horsey and Winterton. Inland, we’ve explored Gooderstone Water Gardens, Gunton Park, Blickling Hall, Wolterton Park, Norwich and Whitlingham. Visit the online gallery of the events (2020, 2021,2022).
If you are a participating artist use the Logging, Location and Logistics pages for Event information and the password previously sent you (contact info@paintout.org or 07432 608015 if you have not received this).
Paint Out Norfolk, 13-22 July 2023
Our outdoor painting programme builds upon 9 years of plein air art events across of Norfolk and Norwich with an open-air exhibition that sees dozens of artwork sales. We expect to welcome over 100 artists from UK, Europe & USA, do sign up early to join the UK’s most innovative plein air art event – the July 2023 event is open for entries with over 100 artists entering via the early bird pricing (save up to £150). Come and capture the height of summer in county, city, coast and countryside locations including Norwich, Norfolk seaside, inland Broads, market towns, and historic houses, gardens and parks, allotments and cemeteries, and forays into Constable country in Suffolk!
This autumn, we are revisiting Norwich and its contrasting medieval streets and modern shops with a specific emphasis on a Nocturne painting festival running Thursday evening through to a Saturday Private View and Sunday exhibition in Cathedral Close, Tombland.
Paint Out has showcased Nocturne painting since we began in 2014. This year’s October event will be primarily focused on the plein air skill of painting as the sun disappears and evening lights appear, perhaps reflecting off damp cobbles the neon glows of shops and yellowed street lamps.
8-day tour of Norfolk saw some 75 artists attending, despite the cost of living crisis and hottest weather on record. Check out the painting locations Google map here. View the gallery of some of the finished artworks and Exhibition Catalogue. Well over 600 paintings were created and judged by: art critic and curator Hugh Pilkington, Dr Sally Anne Huxtable (National Trust Chief Curator) and artist Michael Richardson.
In June we painted 16 open gardens and a 14th-century church based in the beautiful Ludham, on the Norfolk Broads. Home to Edward Seago and Kieron Williamson, this event will also see classic cars, heritage boats, and the village life of a summer festival celebration in full swing.
This year sees two warm-up events ahead of July’s art festival and competition. In May we will paint a historic 1000-year-old church in order to help fund its preservation and also paint the sweeping views to the East Coast, lakes and arboretum belonging to James Colman nearby.
An 8-day tour of Norfolk and Norwich, coast and countryside which saw over 70 artists participate and paint from Hunstanton to Winterton, Gooderstone Water Gardens to Gunton Park, and across Norwich and the Norfolk Broads.
Judges included artists Maggi Hambling and Rob Adams, and curator/art historian Giorgia Bottinelli.
(See our 2020 Covid update for how we handled safety with a socially distant safe practice event and exhibition)
This year, Paint Out Norwich will provide a finale paintout in the Plantation Garden to the Paint Out Norfolk Gardens series which will have taken place May-October, through the year’s changing seasons, light, and colour. We are now painting Norwich Bishop’s Garden (14 Oct) as well as Plantation Garden (15 Oct) and hope to have sessions exploring other urban parks and gardens in and around Norwich.
Paint Out Holt, 19-20 July 2019
The Holt Festival (21-27 July), now in its eleventh year, has invited Paint Out to open this year’s Festival with a two-day Paint Out and Private View (19-20 July) around the charming North Norfolk town. Robert Upstone a Tate curator will be judging at Paint Out Holt.
Home to 500-year-old Gresham’s School (alumni include WH Auden, Olivia Colman, Benjamin Britten, James Dyson, and the artist Ben Nicholson), this two-session Paint Out will be backed up by a ten-day exhibition in Picturecraft of Holt, a gallery and Art material supplier with the winners exhibiting alongside the now well established Holt Art Prize.
Paint Out Norfolk takes place in conjunction with The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts1-7 July (painting days 1st-5th, PV 5th, Exhibition 6th-7th) based around the Sainsbury Centre/UEA campus site and painting further afield including Wells-next-the-Sea, the Broads, and Houghton Hall park.
North Norfolk coast plein air painting competition. Since 2015 this event has seen workshops, demos, beach public paint outs at sunrise, Buttlands exhibition, day trips to neighbouring towns such as Blakeney, Burnham Market, Brancaster Staithe etc. Apply here or more information about our long-running Wells events.
Paint Out Great Yarmouth, 1 Sep 2018
A new one-day event is taking place – Paint Out Great Yarmouth on 1 September, from Seaside to Quayside, in collaboration with Norfolk Museums Service and particularly the Time and Tide Museum’s event ‘Drawn to the Coast: Turner, Constable, Cotman‘ which explores the identity of Great Yarmouth and its surrounding landscape through the artwork it has inspired. Apply here.
Paint Out at the RNS 28-29 June 2017
Paint Out 2017 featured a select group of invited artists painting the UK’s largest two-day agricultural fair – the Royal Norfolk Show. With up to 100,000 visitors it is the premier event of its kind.
Paint Out Great Yarmouth takes place on 1 September 2018, on the East Norfolk coast, during ‘Drawn to the Coast: Turner, Constable, Cotman‘ which explores the identity of Great Yarmouth and its surrounding landscape through the art work it has inspired. J.M.W Turner and John Constable, Norwich School of painters such as Joseph Stannard, John Sell Cotman and John Crome were all drawn to paint here. Now you can too!
Our one day, two sessions, open-air art event celebrates the practice of en plein air painting and ends with a PV of the artworks created on the day, and week-long exhibition.
Jetty, Great Yarmouth, G.S. Stevenson
Paint Out is thrilled to be working with the Norfolk Museums Service and particularly the Time and Tide Museum to bring artists the opportunity to paint some scenes from Great Yarmouth for this one day event and display of them in a museum setting for a week, at the same time as such renowned painters Turner, Constable and Cotman are being exhibited to the general public.
Paint Out Great Yarmouth gives artists the chance to retrace the steps of Turner, Constable and Cotman, taking inspiration from the artworks on display in the exhibition, allowing them to create their own contemporary scenes of Great Yarmouth life which will be displayed in the museum during the final week of the ‘Drawn to the Coast’ exhibition run.
Throughout the 19th century Great Yarmouth attracted artists to its shores. Its prosperity as a port meant that wealthy merchants collected and commissioned artworks. Some became patrons to artists and helped them to establish national reputations. This was also a time when the town’s popularity as a leisure resort was growing and the wealthier tourists provided additional sources of income for artists. These circumstances helped to support the development of a thriving artistic scene in Great Yarmouth.
Firing Rockets at Great Yarmouth, Possibly Related to ‘Life-Boat and Manby Apparatus Going Off’ c.1831 Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775-1851 Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/D35977
Artists ‘drawn to this coast’ include three of the UK’s most important landscape artists. JMW Turner (1775-1851), John Constable (1776-1837) and John Sell Cotman (1782-1842). This exhibition, co-curated by members of the Great Yarmouth community, explores some of the most dramatic local works created by these artists. It includes significant loans of their work from major national lenders including two loaned works by J.M.W Turner from Tate – a watercolour of Great Yarmouth, and, on display in the county for the first time since he sketched in it, his Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex sketchbook.
Join our mailing list to register interest in future Paint Out events and a return to Great Yarmouth and other East Anglian locations if you can’t make this one.
John Behm has a natural affinity for the landscape of Norfolk and the Scottish borders where he was occupied in the conception and execution of public sculptures. He had been unable to work for a while due to a near fatal accident but fortunately has sufficiently recovered to be back to creating art and sculptures and has been making some beautiful paintings en plein air.
John studied Drawing & Painting, Sculpture and Architectural Design in the US, and at the Edinburgh College of Art.
Several decades of working within art and design with turns in teaching, writing, portraits, life-drawing, and several exhibitions means that John has a strong background in art that he is currently augmenting by studying Art History. He has numerous sculptures on past and/or present display in Scotland and Norfolk, as well as work in public collections including the City of York, the National Museums of Scotland, “The House for an Art Lover” in Glasgow, and the Coldstream Museum.
Whilst mainly painting in oils, when not carving stone and wood, and casting sculptures in bronze, he has occasionally gone mixed media including adding twigs to a three-dimensional painting at Paint Out events; he is always willing to try something new. His preference of subject includes landscape as palimpsest, the spirit of place human experience, history, family, and sensory delights.
John says of his work that:
“The idea is first, then I choose the medium – paint, wood, bronze, steel, stone, film. The word ‘art’ comes from Sanskrit, from a root meaning simply to make: it’s the making, and what, that keeps me going.”
John made the press when, in 2018, he dived into the River Wensum to rescue fellow artist and Paint Out founder James Colman’s artwork that has fallen in, easel and all, and was floating face-up in the water, heading towards Fye Bridge. Despite the October chill, John handed over his own painting, stripped off his art clothes, mounted the bridge wall and dived in the cold river to cheers from onlookers. He swam towards the waterlogged gouache and dragged it to dry land, lifesaver-style!
Now a four-times winner of the Paint OutSpirit of Plein Air prize in two locations, John is renowned for getting into deep water! Back in 2009, he waded chest-deep into the sea to install bronze sculptures in the sea off the Berwickshire coast. “All in the name of art,” was his explanation or perhaps excuse, looking for any reason to get wet!
“Ultimately it was an adventure that took us over two hours in the sea wading about bringing everything ashore. We lit a fire to warm ourselves up then installed the waymark without two much trouble.” – John Behm
Michael Richardson painting an artist painting Tombland public paint out.
Michael Richardson was educated at Ipswich College of Art and later in Paris. His work has been exhibited in the Royal Society of Marine Artists (RSMA), the Royal Society of British Artists (RBA), the Royal Institute of Oil Painters (ROI), the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours’ shows at the Mall Galleries and at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition.
Michael is a member of the Wapping Group of Artists (probably the oldest outdoor painting society in the UK), The Chelsea Art Society, and council member of the United Society of Artists. He is also a founder member of the Brass Monkeys Art Society, a hardcore group of winter outdoor painters.
He won the inaugural Paint Out Norwich Nocturne Prize in 2015 and was runner-up in 2016. He regularly delivers oil painting and nocturne workshops during Paint Out events. At Wells-next-the-Sea in 2017, Michael was a guest artist, demonstrator, and prize judge for Paint Out Wells.
Paint Out Awards
Paint Out Norwich – Nocturne Second Prize (2016)
Paint Out Norwich – Nocturne First Prize (2015)
Paint Out plein air art competition event dates go live early each year but additional events may still be announced throughout. You can lodge a registration of interest in our various events – this is not an entry to an event, it just gets you on the Call to Artists announcement mailing list. The buttons below will also take you to live entry forms within the event entry-date windows.
You can register your interest below to be kept up to date when submission forms for each event are live and to be a part of future Paint Outeventsas well as other locations, and even suggest your own.
