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EMILY BALL AT SEAWHITE‍

CONTEMPORARY DRAWING AND PAINTING COURSES‍

GARDENS, FLOWERS & SUMMER PAINTING

Join us in the garden, in the studio, and online this summer

Image: Emily working in the st‍udio, Flowers, student making studies at Highdown Gardens (Emily Ball/KatieSollohub)

Dear  ‍Visitor ‍

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The garden is a place of abundance and dreaming — somewhere to slow down, look closely, and gather inspiration. Flowers carry far more than beauty; they open worlds of sensation, memory, atmosphere, and meaning that painters return to again and again.

This summer, our exhibition, courses, and online learning all explore the flower and the garden as subjects rich with emotion, transformation, and creative possibility.

In this newsletter,  we'll be taking a closer look at:
• Extraordinary Flowers: Beauty, Decay & Desire — a new exhibition at the Atrium Gallery
• Summer in the Garden — our immersive painting Summer School at Highdown Gardens and Seawhite Studio
• A Fistful of Flowers — a new pre-recorded course with Emily Ball exploring bold, expressive flower painting that launches on our website on 15th June.

Read on to find out more, or click on the buttons below to head straight to our website for more information: 

Extraordinary Flowers:

Beauty, Decay & Desire

Atrium Gallery, Seawhite of Brighton
Opening Event: Saturday 6 June | 10am–4pm

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Images: details from paintings by Carolyn  Macleod, John Skinner,‍ Gail Elson, Katie Sollohub, Liz Crossfield

Extraordinary Flowers brings together artists who move beyond the conventions of decorative flower painting, exploring flowers instead as forms charged with tension, transformation, sensuality, and emotional power. Here, flowers are not passive objects of beauty but active, complex presences: seductive, unruly, fleeting, and resilient all at once.‍

John Skinner’s paintings draw on wild orchids encountered during lockdown, reimagining flowers as strange and resistant forms that disrupt ideas of beauty and sentimentality.‍

Image: Les fleurs perfides - charle - Viol(ette)s - Viols - Viol(accée)s - passif aggressif - huile sur papier - 72x46cm - 2022 (2), John Skinner

 Gail Elson creates sensual,

atmospheric paintings shaped by light, movement, and physical sensation; a place where paint, plant, and artist meet.

Image: Bloom Like You Mean It, Gail Elson

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 In her exquisite charcoal drawings, Katie Sollohub returns annually to the snowdrop as a meditation on time, renewal, and the fleeting nature of life.

Image: Tender (Awareness), Katie Sollohub

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 Carolyn Macleod’s vibrant floral paintings balance beauty with unease, exploring emotion, femininity, and lived experience through instinctive and intuitive mark-making.

Image: Verdant Falls in the Nigh Sky (Small), Carolyn Macleod

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Liz Crossfield’s painting practice is rooted in nature, childhood reverie, and emotional sensation, creating abstract floral sanctuaries that hold both lightness and the weight of lived experience through an instinctive, alchemical engagement with materials and subject.

Image: 'Roses Wilde Series - Book IV', Acrylic on hardback book cover, 2025‍, Liz Crossfield

Together, the exhibition reveals flowers as forms full of contradiction — delicate yet powerful, intoxicating yet transient, capable of speaking simultaneously of beauty, decay, longing, and transformation.

The opening event on Saturday 6 June offers the first opportunity to experience the exhibition in person. Many of the artists will be present, and Emily will be there to welcome visitors — alongside her usual excellent cakes.It promises to be a wonderful celebration of painting, drawing and flowers - please join us!

For more information, click on the button below to visit the exhibition’s gallery webpage on our website:

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Summer in the Garden

at Highdown Gardens

With Emily Ball & Katie Sollohub
29 June – 3 July
Highdown Gardens, Worthing (Days 1–2) + Seawhite Studio (Days 3–5)
£580‍

Image: Making studies at Highdown Gardens (KatieSollohub)‍

Summer in the garden is a moment of abundance — colour at its fullest, growth at its most expressive, and a setting alive with movement, sound, and light.  Everything feels heightened: colour intensifies, shadows deepen, and the natural world feels both unruly and precise.

This year’s Summer School returns to Highdown Garden and is an invitation to immerse yourself in that energy, where the garden becomes both subject and metaphor — a space for looking, gathering, and developing ideas that can grow into painting. The aim of the summer school is to give you the tools and courage to transform on-location studies into successful painting back in the studio.

Image: Making studies at Highdown Gardens (KatieSollohub)‍‍

Highdown Gardens are extraordinary — located on the edge of the South Downs, it is a garden full of delights: mature trees and plants, winding pathways that lead into open spaces where you can sit immersed in the sights, sounds, and scents of nature.  Access is easy, with well-maintained paths and benches dotted throughout, allowing time to pause, observe, and draw in comfort. Set within an old chalk pit, the garden is both beautiful and remarkable — a carefully cultivated environment where plants from across the world have been chosen to flourish in this distinctive setting.‍

 “I loved the gardens. I liked that they were open into the evening and they were relaxed with lots of private areas to work.” — Cath Sacco‍

Image: Flowers at Highdown Gardens (Emily Ball/Katie Sollohub)

With over 50+ years combined experience, Emily and Katie’s team-teaching style is encouraging and inspiring, using a range of approaches and proven exercises that really help you engage with the subject and make studies and paintings that communicate that connection. 

Images: Studies made at Highdown Gardens‍

The first two days of the In-Person Summer School take place at Highdown Gardens, where you will make a range of studies that capture the experience of this peaceful and inspiring place. Guided grounding exercises are woven throughout the process to help you connect more deeply with your surroundings. You will be introduced to a variety of approaches for making successful studies, including mark-making, collage, and written tasks.‍

Image: Making paintings from studies at the Seawhite Studio (Katie Sollohub)

Back in the studio, Emily and Katie guide you through transforming those studies into resolved paintings — helping you select, edit, and develop work that holds the memory, energy, and atmosphere of the garden experience.

“Katie and I will be encouraging you to be painterly: to embrace and use the beautiful colours, textures and natural patterns that have inspired you from the gardens to make joyful and evocative paintings that bring the garden into the studio.” ~ Emily‍

Image: Making paintings from studies at the Seawhite Studio (Katie Sollohub)‍

They will show you how to unpack and select from your many studies. They will expertly guide you through different approaches that will enable you invent, compose and create ambitious paintings‍ that bring back the glorious riot of colours, patterns, mood and memories of being in the garden.‍ By the end of the course you will have started a collection of paintings and also have a set of exercises and ways of working to maintain an independent practice beyond the course. This could lead to a body of really interesting and exciting work, reflecting your experience of seeing, and sensing Summer in the garden.

To find out more about Summer in the Garden at Highdown Gardens, click on the button below:

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A Fistful of Flowers

Pre-recorded course with Emily Ball
£130

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Image: A Fistful of Flowers , Emily Ball‍

 Created alongside Extraordinary Flowers and developed from years of teaching flower-based painting courses, Emily Ball’s new pre-recorded course – A Fistful of Flowers -  is a focused online course designed to push your painting further.

It encourages bold, direct engagement with flowers as subject matter — exploring colour, layering, editing, and mark-making to build paintings that hold both delicacy and strength.‍

Image: A Fistful of Flowers , Emily Ball‍

 This is not about decorative floral painting, but about working with flowers as energetic, structural, and emotional forms — pushing paint to express the numerous qualities contained in each bloom.‍

Image: A Fistful of Flowers , Emily Ball‍

 A Fistful of Flowers will be live to download from our programme of pre-recorded courses on June 15th:

Summer in the Garden Live Online

With Emily Ball & Katie Sollohub

22 – 25 June (Monday – Thursday)

£250‍

If you are unable to join us for the in-person Summer School, you may prefer to take part in Summer in the Garden Live Online instead. This course offers a parallel experience from wherever you are, inviting you to take inspiration from your own garden - or place of your choosing. 

Using the buttons below, you can book your place or read our previus in-depth newsletter about our online summer school:

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