Monday the 9 June 2025 we had a workshop run by two representatives for the Seagrass Project. They were Kathrine Renton and Luke McTaggart from Dovecoat Art Centre in Amble. To summarise our day I will use Janet Buist’s excellent recap as follows.
”I just thought I would do a round up of yesterday’s workshop with Luke and Katherine from the Dovecote Arts Centre. I thoroughly enjoyed the session which was informative, educational and great fun. After their presentation, we now know much more about the long term project to reintroduce seagrass around the UK coast with Amble and Holy Island being two of the sites chosen as they have areas where it can still be found.
The creative aspect of the morning took the form of an art class, firstly looking at other artists’ work on the subject, and we had an amazing selection of freshly caught fish from the North Sea to choose as our still life subjects, langoustine, squid, herring, mackerel, red fish to name but a few! Luke and Katherine were very attentive tutors and I certainly came away having learnt some new techniques when using acrylic paint. We produced some really good pictures so, well done all, I think we impressed the teachers. We were privileged to be the first local group to have one of these workshops and the plan is to record the work and produce a booklet in due course. Luke will also send some photos to me for Didrik to put on our website.
I think one thing I have taken away from the morning is that it is always good to try something new and different, I have never painted a fish before but it was an inspiring and interesting exercise, we are never too old to learn.”
