​In October I'm pleased to be welcoming artists Eric and Laura Cruikshank for a joint residency here at Pasture Project Space.

Eric Cruikshank is a Scottish abstract artist, best known for his subtle colour field works that address notions of time, memory, and the emotive qualities of place. His art spans an array of media, organised by the support, with the collective factor being the addition and subtraction of the medium - all completed with a meticulous finish. The works operate as a bridge between abstraction and representation, where neither impression can be isolated, as each continuously emerges from and recedes into the other. A period of quiet focussed looking is required, where fragments of recollections emerge, raising questions about what can appear familiar, with definitive answers only reflecting a loss of possibility.

He graduated with a BA (Hons) Painting and Drawing from Edinburgh College of Art in 1997 and lives and works in Edinburgh. His artworks have been included in exhibitions throughout the UK, Europe, America, and Japan, and he has been the recipient of several awards and residencies.

This residency will offer time and space for him to explore directions beyond the familiar patterns of his Edinburgh studio, with the region’s rural terrain presenting the opportunity to develop new rhythms of working both out and in doors. Quick plein air drawings will provide a direct engagement with the landscape, while the studio will offer space for technical adaptation and refinement. This combination of working environments will position the residency as a period of development and progression, with Sudbury’s muted colour shifts and soft river light broadening my palette, encouraging a heightened sensitivity to pigment, tone, and the subtleties of environmental change.

​Laura Cruikshank is a process driven jeweller, based in Edinburgh, with a passion for working intuitively with materials. Following a ‘thinking through making' approach she allows the rhythms of observing, drawing, collecting, and making to overlap, where the act of being present forms the core focus and inspiration of her work. Laura's creative path is a combination of fine art and design, providing a strong foundation in ways of looking and studying the tactile world. Her work inspires curiosity for both the miniature details of the natural environment and the patience and craftsmanship of ancient techniques. With a passion for traditional skills and working in precious metals, Laura combines processes forming her own visual language. Lost wax casting, chain fabrication, texturing and filigree are collaged together resulting in contemporary, wearable compositions. An ever-growing library of abstracted forms, textures and subtle movements is slowly built where components are sensitively curated, allowing the work to organically reach a point where balance is achieved.

During her time here Laura will explore the use of locally foraged materials to construct abstracted miniature sculptures, following a deconstruction reconstruction process which reflects her curiosity for small, intricate and delicate shapes and forms. On return to her studio in Edinburgh Laura will use these compositions to test the casting process working with natural botanical materials and the potential held in direct translation to metal. Works on paper will also support this period of study, with an interest in journeying through the landscape documenting gathered fragments.

I'm delighted to welcome Della Gooden as the next artist in residence at Pasture. She will be working here during November and December. Della is a British artist, writer and curator whose work often takes the form of site-responsive installations. She is committed to painting and drawing, whilst being dimensionally attentive to the architectural, spatial and material context in which her work is made. The contradictions that this way of working presents is explored and expressed in specific works - for example, the role of the wall.

Until recently Della’s painting and drawing installations have usually been made inside, within an architectural context; in a room, a crumbling outhouse, or an enclosed space of some sort. In 2025, for the first time, work was made specifically outdoors; on the mountainside in Seyðisfjörður, Iceland and on Sveti Nikola Island, Croatia.

During her residency here at Pasture Project Space, Della will continue to work outdoors, this time in the unique environment of the Water Meadows of Sudbury, Suffolk. Initial research trips before the residency have focused on some of the architectural structures and agricultural features found in the ‘scapes’ of land, water, and sky. Of potential interest to Della is how these structures and features exist outdoors, and yet are still contained; still part of a larger interior… objects under the sky…

Strands of Della's practice that have a co-operative influence on her studio output are curating and writing. From 2005 to 2011 she curated the project space VINEspace and then Gooden Gallery in East London where she developed alternative platforms like 24SEVEN and A One Night Stand with… for performances, screenings and happenings. She is a founding member of Working Spaces (a collective and research group in the UK that explores painting’s spatiality). In December 2025 her most recent text ‘The Void; a fertile space’ will be published in ‘Discourses’ by the Royal Academy Discourse Forum. 

This month I'm pleased to be welcoming Agata Borowa, a Polish painter who lives and works in Warsaw. Her works explore themes of representation, illusion, and the perception of reality. From 2019 to 2020, she collaborated with the Department of Molecular Biophysics at Adam Mickiewicz University, researching the possibilities of 'Schlieren effect, which resulted in the creation of the film 'I am the air you breathe'. In 2001 she co-founded the group Borowe Sisters, with her sister Dorothy which explores themes of sisterhood and identity. For several years, she has been collaborating with Piotr Leszczyński as the Hypnosis Collective, working together on art and science projects. Agata teaches drawing at the School of Form, in the Design Department of SWPS University, Warsaw.


Agata says 'an artist residency is, for me, a moment to step outside the everyday and encounter something other — both in the world and within myself. I come open to new experiences, seeking inspiration in colour and landscape. I’m interested in colour not just as a visual element, but as a force that shapes perception, emotion, and memory. I explore how colours interact, how they influence what and how we see — and whether what we see is truly located where we look.

Themes of illusion often appear in my work — not as tricks, but as questions about the nature of seeing. Equally important is the act of painting itself: physical, sensory, and intuitive. I hope to use this time to deepen my practice in a space where looking becomes experiencing, and the painted image becomes a trace of perception.'

I'm very pleased to be welcoming writer poets Laura Wetherington from Nevada and Hannah Ensor from Michigan, USA this month to do a residency here from 21 November.

Laura writes and teaches creative writing at the University of Nevada and with the International Writers' Collective. Her first book, A Map Predetermined and Chance (Fence Books), was selected by C.S. Giscombe for the National Poetry Series. The Brooklyn Rail called the book 'humble, folksy, romantic, tough, inventive, and not over-programmed.'  She has published four chapbooks: Dick Erasures (Red Ceilings Press); at the intersection of 3 (Dancing Girl Press), collaboratively written with Jill Darling and Hannah Ensor: Grief Is the Only Thing That Flies (Bateau Press), which Arielle Greenberg selected for the Keel Chapbook Contest; and most recently, Little Machines (Salò Press). 

Hannah is a poet and essayist working around topics of Pop culture, sports, queer television and mass media, her first book of poetry is Love Dream with Television (Noemi Press 2018)
With Natalie Diaz she served as joint associate editor of  Bodies Built for Game, an anthology of contemporary sports literature, and with Laura Wetherington and Jill Darling they co-wrote the collaborative poetry chapbook at the intersection of 3. In 2019 they won the Judith A. Markowitz Award for Emerging Writers from Lambda Literary. Their writing has appeared in literary journals and anthologies, including the PEN Poetry Series, The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, Essay Daily, JUPITER88, and Anne Carson: Ecstatic Lyre. Hannah teaches courses on contemporary poetry, creative writing and contemporary sports literature at the University of Michigan’s Residential College and English Department. 

They say: 'In 2016 we were walking around together in the summertime in a place where neither of us lived. A lot was going on, as a lot is going on now, and we wanted to respond in some way other than a think piece. This led to the beginning of our book-length work in progress, Feel Episodes. We met as colleagues in a university-level live-learn literature programme and have, over the last 10 years, met semi-regularly to mediate; talk about teaching, poetry, queerness, life; and to write together. Now both parents (of young people - three and five year olds) who have spent the last six years living on different continents, we want to walk around together again in a place where neither of us lives, allowing our collaboration to organically extend into the community of Sudbury'.

I'm delighted that Peter Harrap will be staying at Pasture for a week from 4 - 11 July 2024. During his residency he  will be looking at ideas of wanderlust and painting in the landscape around East Bergholt and exploring John Constable's connections with this area and the walks he took to make his paintings. 

Peter is a British Romanian Artist and Curator based in Brighton. He is co-curator of Constable 250 that will celebrate the 250th anniversary of John Constable and will be deeply connected with this area over the next 2 years leading up to this . In 2010 He investigated the site of his own studio with Shan Lancaster and found it to have been John Constable’s Brighton Lodgings and Studio 1824-1828. Peter then proposed an exhibition ‘ Constable and Brighton, Something out of Nothing’ held at Brighton Museum for which he was the Curator. Simultaneously he proposed an overlap between Constable and Grigorescu a Romanian artist with similar working methods. A V&A exhibition called ‘ John Constable : Seeking Truth ‘ travelled to Bucharest from September -December 2022 and a Grigorescu exhibition occurred at the National Gallery România ( MNAR) the following year. This was a first for bilateral swaps with major museums to Bucharest. 

As an artist Peter has exhibited widely including at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, Brighton Museum and Iasi Palace of Culture România. His work is in the collection of Knoxville Museum of Modern Art, America. 

We're pleased to announce that painter Lizzy Langford will be staying at Pasture for a week from the 8th August. She'll be exploring the meadows and local flora, looking at making dyes and pigments for paintmaking. Her practice centres around using traditional methods of extracting pigments from earth and plant matter. Lizzy's paintings suggest another way of seeing and engaging with the natural world, in the action of painting, in movement and process, between the site of the pigment and the site of the studio.

Her personal motivations are to draw attention to the current global crisis, working with organic matter to discuss unrelenting growth in the name of “progress” and humanities consequential dissociation from nature.

We are delighted that Sarah Needham is going to be here from 20th February as our next artist in residence. Sarah, a painter from London, is concerned with human inter-connectedness, and the interplay between the personal and the universal as expressed though the material  of pigment. She makes her own pigments and has an interest in the way in which pigments leave material colour across human history and geography and traces of people's interactions. There is a sense in which these colours hold more than the formal record, they hold nuance and space for connection, for potential and extant symbolism and for the stories never told.

Our second residency is fast approaching and we're really looking forward to having Finnish photographer Anna Lukala coming to stay. Anna will be staying with us for a week from Sunday June 26th until Sunday July 3rd when she will be giving a talk on her experiences here - save the date, we'll also be serving tea, coffee and cake for the event. 

Anna is a freelance photographer and visual artist. Originally from Finland, she is now based in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, UK. Anna received a BA (Hons) in Photography from University of Wolverhampton in 1997. The central themes of Anna's practice are sustainability, the commons, material culture, women’s labour and endangered folk traditions. Her practice-based research has challenged her to look at the environmental footprint of her own creative work which has led to her investigating the role that plants and minerals can play in analogue photography as well as experimenting with historic recipes for inks, pigments and dyes, using natural materials. To achieve this she regularly forages and grows her own pigment garden, with the aim to embody a more sustainable and reciprocal practice.

Anna says 'During ​my stay at Braybrooks I am going to be researching the history of the common land of the water meadows and the ancient traditions attached to managing these. I am particularly interested in any historic records surrounding women’s roles here, if any, and how those records are kept and archived. I am keen to meet local folk and collect any oral histories attached to the working on the meadows and learn about the plants specific to the site. I will be experimenting with various alternative analogue photographic techniques and using plant matter and water found in the meadows in my processes. I will be looking at local soils and other natural plant and mineral colours that can be utilised during my residency. To work sustainably and in reciprocity with the land and the environment, it will be influencing the direction of my methods. However I am not expecting a specific outcome but to have the time and space to get inspired by a place that is completely new to me.'

Ruth, the first artist in residence, is a painter, performer, curator and Jungian analyst. She has a specialist interest both clinically and creatively in the dissociability of the psyche, and the potential for healing contained within its complementary trait, the associative tendency. Her live art has explored psychic connectivity between people both living and ancestral, telepathic connection with cultural artefacts, and related to sea creatures and the sea as conduits for the collective unconscious.

She says 'Recently I’ve been making paintings using stills of landscapes and figures from two early vampire films, one set between the world wars, and one in 1934. I like the synergy between them, the relationship across time. And the theme of a shadowy underworld, and crossing between two worlds, is also significant for me: how do we understand ourselves unless we incorporate awareness of what lies beneath what we think we know?'

Ruth is in residence over three weekends in May, and will give a talk about the work on Sunday 29th May 4-6 pm, so put the date in your calendar and keep an eye on this blog and our social media feeds for regular updates.