Portraits of Hastings and St Leonards people

It will be at The Mews Gallery One, upstairs at St Andrews Mews, Waldegrave Street (off Queens Road), Hastings, TN34 1SJ until December 24, open every Wednesday to Sunday from 11am to 4pm. For further information, and to view the portraits, go to www.stephencoelho.com.

Spokeswoman Linda Shanks said: “Hastings and St Leonards are, broadly speaking, not untypical seaside towns with their share of socio-economic challenges. But they have features found nowhere else, at least not in quite the same way.

“Early in 2019 St Leonards-based artist Stephen Coelho began Painting The Town, inspired by these unique features, as a way to document and celebrate them. Each one or part of one unique feature is represented by the portrait of a resident of Hastings and St Leonards, at the time of painting.”

As Linda says, unique to Hastings and St Leonards is the largest beach-launched fishing fleet; a disproportionately large creative community; an award-winning minimalist pier; Hastings Old Town; Burton St Leonards; the largest single bonfire event in Sussex; and the steepest funicular railway.

Stephen has responded with the following portraits: Kevin Armstrong rock guitarist, record producer, musician, songwriter; Pete Brown poet and songwriter; Marcio Da Silva opera singer, conductor, artistic director of Hastings Philharmonic Orchestra and choir; Judy Dewsbury creative Beacon; Mark French captain of torches and beacon, Hastings Bonfire Society; Bert Golding retired fisherman; Alastair Hendy Hastings Old Town retailer; Doon Mackichan actress, comedian, writer; Bernadette Martin operator, East Hill funicular railway; Riz Maslen electronic music composer, musician; Christopher Maxwell-Stewart founder and chairman of the Burton St Leonards Society; Frank Moon oud player, multi-instrumentalist, musician, composer; Leida Nassir-Pour fashion designer, retailer; Bruce Rae photographer; Peter Wheeler chief engineer of Hastings pier; Jason Yarde jazz musician, composer and Laetitia Yhap artist. All portraits are 122cm x 122 cm, acrylic on plywood.

Linda added: “Stephen Coelho is a figurative painter. Draughtsmanship born of rigorous observation and patient interrogation will always be, he insists, of fundamental importance.

"There is the distant echo of a past life as an art director, inherited genes that lend his work, in terms of form at least, a measure of graphic grit. Born in India in 1950, he has lived in the UK since the age of five in Suffolk, Essex, London, East Sussex, Cornwall and, for a time, in France. He now lives and works in St Leonards.”

Pictured: Mark French who is Captain of Torches & Beacon at the Hastings Borough Bonfire Society's annual bonfire event in Hastings. Mark's day job is film maker, lecturer and multi-media lighting gaffer. All 18 portraits are of Hastings and St Leonards residents at the time of painting.