v READ THE HERALD ONLINE: www.herald-publishing.co.uk v 7th December 2023 • The HERALD • Page 25 Commercial & Domestic flooring • Vinyl • Luxury Vinyl Tile (LVT) • Carpet and Carpet Tiles • Wet room specialist Small Showroom Based in Totton & Home Selection Service (by appointment only) Contact Jim on 07922 250670 or richardsonscontractflooring@gmail.com www.richardsonscontractflooring.com Local Window & Gutter Cleaning Services • Fascias • Soffits • Guttering • Full Conservatory Cleans Fully Insured • Special OAP Rates GUTTERS CLEANED AND REPAIRED T: 07946 222820 www.hunterwgc.co.uk Chris Hopkins Painting, Decorating, Carpentry, Tiling Free Estimates Photographs & references available on request Telephone: 023 8081 5210 Mobile: 07986 806277 • Re-Skimming • Rendering • Coving • Dry Lining • Tacking • Artex Covered • Floor Screeding www.tbrownplastering.co.uk Call: 07919 183989 Friendly • Reliable • Professional • Free Estimates DECORATING Interior and Exterior Established 1985 07867 528307 mark.blake.decorating@gmail.com Send your local news to The Editor, The Herald, 2 High Street, Hythe SO45 6AH A REVIEW OF THE 25TH ANNUAL NEW FOREST PAINTERS EXHIBITION by Bernard Stacey Entering the season of storms, wet leaves underfoot, and dark evenings - that long, gloomy interregnum between the end of summer and the twinkle of Advent - what better antidote than an art exhibition by the New Forest Painters? For the 25th consecutive year this group of eleven local artists put on a show of their work of oils, watercolours, and sketches at Lyndhurst Community Centre, from 13-15th October. At the private view on the Friday evening, guests were invited to vote for the ‘People’s Choice’ award - the most popular painting. In a close count, Sue Kerrigan-Harris’s Snowy Morning won and proudly displayed its rosette Peckham. Sumptuous gold-brown trees, plaintive donkeys, and native ponies vied for precedence, whilst next door, Barry Miles’s watercolours provided di erent views of Forest scenes, like the imposing Queen’s (now King’s) House in Lyndhurst. Courtney Leggett presented a series of surreal multi-coloured visions on canvasses, blocks, and decorating a sycamore bowl. Colin Richens’s precise rendering of Donan Castle, and Peter Frost’s gold-ochre Forest world lled much of the far wall, leading to Jennifer Pitt’s admirable collection of deer, ponies, pigs, and donkeys in serene woodland settings. Another husband and wife team - Hilary and Richard Tratt - completed the circuit of the hall with their birdlife and heather landscapes respectively. Autumn blues? Banished! all weekend. Meantime her Sycamore Gap - a painting of the North’s iconic tree recently so tragically illegally felled - raised money for the National Trust in a secret auction. For casual visitors however, there were an embarrassment of potential title claimants. Alan Langford’s inimitable style of Romany riders and scenes of Devonian granite, greeted the eye. Beside these, Janet Langford’s exquisite miniatures of Old Gloucester pigs, carefully preserved in a glass display case, easily drew the eye onwards. Opposite hung a collection by the New Forest’s best known brushsmith, Barry Sue Kerrigan-Harris’s Snowy Morning winner of the People’s Choice Award The artists
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