Paint Out‘s plein air art events and exhibitions in Suffolk, UK, including Southwold & Sudbury and other future Suffolk towns and locations.
Stop Press: We are back in Suffolk in 2024! Paint Out Suffolk will be in Southwold, 5-7 July Apply here.
Paint Out Suffolk, 5-7 July 2024
Three-day art event in Southwold including coast, town and Reydon marshes nr Old Hall Farm Cafe. [Info here…]
Paint Out Sudbury, 30 Jun 2018
One-day art event in Gainsborough’s hometown with options to paint the town, Gainsborough garden, old railway line walk, the Watermeadows, Mill, River Stour, and more. Great views and amazing local countryside on the Suffolk/Essex border. [Info here…]
Paint Out, which began life in Norwich five years ago, takes to the road and will bring a dozen or more plein air artists to Sudbury, Suffolk, on 30 June 2018. This will be followed by a same-day pop-up art exhibition at St Peter’s of fresh artworks, straight off the easel.
The wool (and now silk) town was home to Thomas Gainsborough, founding member of the Royal Academy, who inspired fellow notable artist, John Constable. Modern outdoor artists follow in their tradition, painting in situ, and in Paint Out’s case with curious public onlookers as we invite passers-by to ‘experience art, live’.
The picturesque scenery including the Water Meadows trail and River Stour, the bridges and old railway line, Mill, the market town itself, St Peter’s Church, Gainsborough’s house and period-planted garden, will all serve as landscape inspiration for our experienced outdoor painters and illustrators.
The artists will spend one day, across two intense open air painting sessions, 10-1pm and 2-5pm, recording local views on canvas, and then displaying and selling them in a pop-up one-hour art exhibition in St Peter’s Church, 6-7pm, which also hosts the Sudbury Summer Art Fair, 2-8 July.
The artworks will all have been painted in under three-hours and many will still be wet, even with the sunny forecast! Just like the weather, they will be hot off the easel, and sold unframed, ‘painting-to-go’ so to speak, in carry away boxes, not unlike pizza boxes!
This is a process Paint Out first tried at the Royal Norfolk Show, last year, and has since continued, enabling art lovers to take away a fresh artwork, moments after it is painted, and then to frame it at their leisure and according to their preferred style.
Paint Out began in Norwich in 2014 and has since run a dozen events in Wells-next-the-Sea, other North Norfolk towns, and five large scale multi-day events in Norwich itself, during the annual Hostry Festival (October 2018). Sudbury, is the first of many planned wider East Anglian events.
Stop Press: We are back in Suffolk in 2024! Paint Out Suffolk will be in Southwold, 5-7 July Apply here.
Paint Out Sudbury took place on 30 June 2018, on the Essex/Suffolk border, home to Thomas Gainsborough who inspired John Constable, with picturesque scenery including the Water Meadows and River Stour, an old railway line, the market town itself, St Peter’s Church and Gainsborough’s house. One day, two sessions, en plein air!
A baker’s dozen of plein air artists took to the historic wool town of Sudbury, birthplace of Gainsborough with its snaking River Stour, Suffolk countryside and some 247 Heritage Listed buildings in the town itself. It was a veritable treasure trove of idyllic painting locations on one of the hottest days of the year.
Participating artists included: Eleanor Alison, John Behm, Sarah Berbank Green, Mary Blue Brady, James Colman (non-competing), Tom Cringle, Robin Drury, Jack Godfrey, Julie Hodgson, Andrew Horrod, Robert Nelmes, Eloise O’Hare, Sue Willmer.
Join our mailing list to register interest in future Paint Out events and a return to Sudbury and other towns in Suffolk.
Artist Kate Gabriel painting Winterton-on-Sea allotments during Paint Out Norfolk
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 now open for entries with early bird pricing (save up to £150). Come and capture the height of summer in city, coast and countryside locations including Norwich, Norfolk seaside, inland Broads, market towns, and historic houses, gardens and parks, allotments and cemeteries!
Our third 8 days+ summer format saw 80+ artists brave the hottest heatwave in UK history. Artists painted from the North Coast and its creeks to the sublime serenity of Gooderstone Water Gardens, the National Trust’s Blickling Hall to Wolterton Hall and Park, and across Norwich and the Norfolk Broads.
Judges included Dr Sally Anne Huxtable, Michael Richardson, and Hugh Pilkington.
We continued the new 1-8 days+ summer format with 70 artists and double the exhibition capacity. Artists painted 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.
Moving our premier event to the summer allows us to spend up to 8 days in Norwich and Norfolk, around city, coast and countryside, including seaside and market towns as well as the iconic historic medieval city of Norwich itself.
Following 2018’s midwinter free event we returned to Norwich Market, Jarrolds, Haymarket and the surrounding area to paint the seasonal scenes. Some 20 artists participated, painting early for the light as well as late for the Christmas lights.
Paint Out Norfolk Gardens, May-Oct 2019
Throughout 2019 we explored Norfolk’s great gardens with a succession of one-day events at:
The Holt Festival (21-27 July), now in its eleventh year, 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 judged the event at Paint Out Holt as well as Charlotte Crawley (Art Historian, former EAAF).
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 took 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.
The inaugural Paint Out Cambridge took place 13-17 May (painting 13-15th, PV 16th, exhibition till 17th) in collaboration with Cheffins Fine Art. Iconic views, Cambridge colleges, Kings College Chapel, the River Cam – its punts and bridges, the Market, may all feature in our first plein air Cambridge art event.
Paint Out™ is a multi-faceted event aiming to redefine en plein air art practice. Our core event is the premier and only fully juried en plein air competition in the United Kingdom, celebrating the talents of national and international artists before a wide and growing audience in the heart of medieval and iconic Norwich and at satellite locations. Our events aim to push the experience of painting en plein air and its challenges in all weather conditions, times of day and light, and varied locations and points of view.
Plein Air – Art works carried out in the open air – chiefly with reference to painting. The Paint Out competitions, however, accept any 2-dimensional media or mixed-media applied to a canvas/board/paper embracing drawing, pastels, oils, watercolour, and even screen-printing. Innovation and originality are encouraged alongside traditional art forms.
History of the Paint Out Competition
Paint Out Norwich launched in 2014 during the city’s October Hostry Festival, that itself began in 2011. Some 30 artists participated in the first Norwich event, 35-45 in subsequent events. Read about the prizewinners from Paint Out Norwich 2014,Norwich 2015,Norwich 2016, Paint Out Norwich 2017 and Paint Out Norwich 2018. Paint Out events also hit the North Norfolk coast of Wells-next-the-Sea, Blakeney, Brancaster Staithe, and Burnham Market, in 2015-2018 and Great Yarmouth in 2018. See some of the past winners: Paint Out Wells 2016, 2017, 2018. Paint Out Norfolk 2020-23 saw us move the main event to the summer months and now attracts 70-100 artists.
