Thank you to everyone who supported the Exhibition, it remains one of the most highly thought of Exhibitions in the region, because of the quality of work and it’s professional display. We had 618 visitors compared to 582 last year. We were fortunate to have a renowned artist, Lynda Kettle, as our Judge. She said was impressed at the standard of work and made the following awards.
- The Alison Leadley Brown Cup for the Best Overall went to Judy Stutchbury for her Watercolour, “Summer Reflections”. Highly Commended Awards in this category went to Alison Gwilliam for her mixed media painting, “Time for a Walk” and Melanie Bettridge’s collage “Lympstone”,
- “The Norman de la Rue Prize winner was Sheila Stone for her etching, “ Ednam Cottage, “ with Highly Commended Awards going to Suki Commin for her colour pencil drawing, “Cherries” and to Magot Cornish for her acrylic painting, “Sunflower Joy”.
- The Pat Ferguson Award for the Best Abstract went to Hilary Bird for her acrylic painting, “Otterhead in Colour”,
- The award for Best 3D Exhibit went to Kay Coomber for her ceramic Fishing Boat, Highly Commended Awards went to John Welton for his wooden bowl, “After Storm Darragh” and to Mai Welton for her, “ Swallow on a Wire”.
- The vote for Favourite Picture was a close-run thing with two clear leaders Teresa Sauven with her acrylic painting on canvas “Meanderings “and Neville Tarbath with his mixed media picture “The End of the Day”. Neville won by a narrow margin.
- The winner of the raffle for the acrylic picture of gull. “Love Is” by Melanie Bettridge was Chris Ponsonby from Topsham. The winner of the secret bid for Margot Cornish’s picture of Penguins was Liz Herring.
We had lots of fabulous pictures submitted in our Young Artists Competition. The Winners in our in different age categories were:
- Age 10: Alice Fitzgibbon, with Sunset from cliff field;
- Age 9: Jaxon Heath, pencil drawing of a Cat;
- Age 7: Alfred Kirby, with his drawing of a Cat in a Hat;
- Age 6: Emilia Derrien with her painting of the beach and Peters tower decorated with sea glass;
- Age 5: Iggy Rejzl with his colourful painting of a Parrot;
- Age 2: Mabel Edwards with her blue, orange and green abstract.
Other pictures of particular merit were Verity Webber’s amazing Black Cat with Shining Eyes, Oleksandr Kozak’s painting of a House, Lexi Parker with her Bay with Boats and Rufus Rejzl with his Tree with Snake Cat and Parrot. We had so many wonderful entries.
Dates of the 2026 Exhibition are the half term week 24h to 31st May- we hope to see you again next year.
Judith Carter, Lympstone Art Group
