The Festival exhibition this year features the work of three artists and their different views of the Welsh Marches. The exhibition opens on Friday 10th October with a Meet the Artists event at 6.30pm and after the Festival the paintings will be on view until 30 October.

Richard Gilbert

Richard gained an MA at Chelsea School of Art and MFA at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago. He has exhibited in the UK, USA and in Europe and worked as both practitioner and art teacher. Recent exhibitions include ‘Common Ground’ drawing on a decade of landscape paintings in 2019 and in 2021, ‘Round the Year from Stonewall Hill’ of large-scale panoramic landscapes celebrating the calendar year, both at Hereford Museum and Art Gallery. In 2022, Apples and People commissioned a digital outcome viewed online at https://applesandpeople.org.uk/pissarro/  based on paintings of orchards made over a year at Breinton Springs.

Richard has organised ‘In Search of the Perfect Hill’ featuring hills across the Marches in Ludlow 2022, Malvern 2023 and at Bloom Space, Hereford in 2025, and co-curated The Hogbacks Hills at the Sidney Nolan Trust in 2024. Recent watercolours were featured in a solo show ‘Spots of Time’ at the Chapel Gallery, Bromyard in 2025 and is part of ‘Every step of the Way’ currently at the Weald and Downland Museum.  Ongoing landscape projects include Ghost Trees at Croft Castle https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/worcestershire-herefordshire/croft-castle-and-parkland/

Stuart Roper

“Stuart sees the play of light as if refracted through a prism. He builds his compositions through gestural marks working in much the same way as the Impressionists, creating compositions that dance on the canvas.” Jenny Blyth Fine Art

Stuart studied design and illustration in Aberdeen. On leaving college he worked as an illustrator and hisfirst collaborative exhibition was as part of the Contemporary Young Scottish Artists in Edinburgh in 1979. Alonside his commercial work, he has exhibited in numerous joint and solo exhibitions, both in the UK and Europe. He says “My work as an illustrator and designer has influenced my work as a painter in many ways, in particular the sense of perspective and composition, though the freedom of painting for myself is a welcome counterpoint to the constraints of creating commercial artwork. My work shows the influence of Scottish painters such as Peploe, Fergusson, Hornel and Eardley.”

Stuart is represented by a number of galleries in both England and Wales.

Visit: http://www.widcombehouse.co.uk or http://www.instagram.com/stuartroperartist

Celia de Serra

Celia de Serra is an artist living and working on the Welsh borders. She makes semi-photorealistic detailed drawings as a means of exploring and documenting the often fragile places she knows and cares about – perhaps before they are lost. She says “in finding an image that might resonate, and through remaking it, I hope to reconcile my engagement and love for the natural world with an increasing sense of horror at the abuses we have inflicted, and continue to inflict upon it”. 

She builds up layers of detail in her intense drawings, focusing on the effect of light and depth. 

Celia studied English and Fine Art at Exeter and since graduating has exhibited her work widely in the UK.  She is also a founder member of the Arborealists – a loose group of like minded artists who have an environmental slant to their work.