Sidmouth Society of Artists' latest demo was held at Kennaway House and featured Exeter-based professional James Tatum using acrylics in his landscapes.

He began by explaining that his approach to paintings is spontaneous and free. This soon became apparent when calm application of paint was suddenly punctuated with what I can only describe as lunges at his easel with extravagant swipes and flips.

Anyone nodding off at this point was suddenly wide awake. He explained that these seemingly haphazard explosions were driven by his own instinctive feel and intuition, a product of decades of practice, which, it became apparent, tended to elevate the landscape from mundane to alive and sparkling.

What can be seen as remarkable is that James’ career as an engineer required accuracy and precision. Now his objectives are more ethereal, a desire to explore ‘a cross between the abstract and the natural world’ as he put it.

Interestingly, each demo at Kennaway House seems to bring to the fore the idiosyncratic habits of the individual artists. In this instance we observed that James prepared batches of two or three colours on a paper plate; when he had used them the remainder was unceremoniously splattered against the face of the painting and splodged around a bit. Admittedly this does sound a bit hit and miss and yet, because he is always doing it, he seemed to pull it off every time, each time it further enhanced his work. It’s what we used to call organised disorder!

James explained that he used bigger decorators' two-inch and two-and-a half-inch brushes by choice and also made use of a window cleaner's rubber scraper to put in tree trunks at a stroke, or, more accurately, at a scrape.

He concluded that his influences as an artist are nature and the Old Masters, and he received a spontaneous round of applause for a job well done.

The highly individual and inventive Society member Cherry Ferris organised an in-house workshop entitled ‘Scribble and Splash’ with the key word being curiosity. In Cherry’s words:

“It was so lovely to see everyone’s confidence grow throughout the day as people forgot to ‘paint’ and instead really started to play and experiment..yay!!!  Wonderful individual and expressive paintings from all..you all bossed watercolour, overcame big brush fears and found your inner playful scribble..”

For more, exciting SSA news, please visit: www.sidmouthsocietyofartists.com