Patcham Arts on the seafront

Brighton’s Fishing Quarter Gallery has been home this week to a lively and heartfelt group show titled ‘Brighton Beautiful and Beyond’, showcasing a broad range of work by members of Patcham Arts (see also their Facebook page). With its seafront location and unpretentious style, the gallery offers the perfect setting for this grassroots exhibition, which closes on Sunday. Among the standout contributions are seafront paintings by Judy Alexander and Julia Ann Field, two artists whose work captures not just the visual richness of Brighton but also something of its underlying energy and rhythm.

Judy Alexander brings to the exhibition a subtle painterly style that favours shifting colour fields and atmospheric light. Her seafront paintings are at once recognisable and elusive, rendering the coast in gently abstracted forms that evoke memory and mood rather than precise location. Now based in Brighton, Alexander studied fine art in her youth but returned to painting later in life, after a career in education. She is an active member of the Patcham Arts group and has exhibited widely in community venues across East Sussex. Her work often responds to the changing seasons and skies above the shoreline, combining a personal sense of place with a quiet, meditative sensibility.

Julia Ann Field, by contrast, works in bolder gestures and saturated colours. Her paintings of the Brighton seafront are expressive and dynamic, frequently incorporating broad brushwork and unconventional perspectives. In this exhibition, her use of strong reds and blues recalls the carnival palette of beach huts, deckchairs and festival crowds, yet is underpinned by careful composition and technical control. Field trained in design and textile arts before moving into painting, and her background remains visible in the structural layering of her work. She maintains a studio practice in Brighton and has shown in various local exhibitions, including the Artists Open Houses. Her paintings often seek to distil the atmosphere of a moment - a gust of sea wind, a sudden cloudburst, a surge of movement on the promenade.