Art in Essex

Essex's art scene is denser and more surprising than its reputation suggests, and it has a clear centre of gravity: Colchester. Britain's oldest recorded town holds the largest single concentration of working artists anywhere in the region, sustained by Firstsite, The Minories, the university and the long-established Colchester Art Society, whose members gallery is often the only place an artist's own statement appears in print.

Downriver, the Colne villages punch far above their weight. Wivenhoe, Rowhedge, Fingringhoe and Brightlingsea between them hold a remarkable number of painters and printmakers for their size, and the annual Rowhedge Art Trail opens front rooms and riverside studios across a single village. Water shapes the subject matter as much as the geography: the Colne and Blackwater estuaries, the creeks and the saltmarsh recur throughout, and there is a plein air group formed specifically to paint Essex saltmarsh. At the Thames end, Leigh-on-Sea and Southend-on-Sea draw painters to estuary light, while the far north-west around Saffron Walden looks toward Cambridge, its artists often showing with Cambridge Open Studios rather than Essex networks.

Where to see it: Firstsite and The Minories in Colchester, the Fry Art Gallery in Saffron Walden for the Great Bardfield artists, the Munnings Art Museum at Dedham, North House Gallery in Manningtree, Geedon Gallery at Fingringhoe, and the Beecroft Art Gallery and Focal Point Gallery in Southend-on-Sea.