MAKING A MARK

• you are invited to submit up to three drawings 
• Deadline for entries: Stage 1 digital submissions online must be completed by Tuesday 9 June 2026 at 5pm.

Things you need to know 

The Artists in the Pods

• Including a synopsis of their background
• Links to their websites (if they have one) are embedded in their names.
• Social media platforms are also referenced - but typically only one

the artists after they finished painting

• Charmaine Alexander (Instagram) - an artist and retired photographer from Epping Forest. She aims to create expressive landscapes using distinctive mark-making and patterns. She uses strong, defining lines. These “mass lines” are used to connect areas of visual mass, such as clouds, shadows, and reflections; directing the viewers gaze through the composition reinforcing elements such as motion, or silence.Her work has been exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and also at her recent solo exhibition “On The Edge” in Hertfordshire.

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A post shared by Charmaine Alexander (@charmainealexander24)

• Prasad Beaven (Instagram) - Prasad Beaven is a visual artist whose practice explores inner and outer landscapes through spiritual and intuitive processes. A graduate of the Kings’s Foundation School of Traditional Arts (MA, 2021) and the University of Brighton (BA Illustration, 2017), he has recently been elected as a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour. He has exhibited internationally, including a solo presentation at the Saatchi Gallery and he is the recipient of the Ciclitira Prize (2021), presented by HRH King Charles III. He works primarily in water-based media, combining ink marbling with drawing and painting. His artwork develops through a slow, meditative process of layering light washes of ink and allowing the image to take shape gradually. He spent six years of his childhood in northern India, in the foothills of the Himalayas which informs his meditative approach to art. 
• He has taught a number of watercolour landscape courses  at The King's Foundation School of Traditional Arts in Shoreditch. eg last November he taught a "Landscape Painting in Watercolour: Turner, Cotman, Seago and Beyond" course. 
• Next month he's also teaching a course on Ink Landscapes: Discovering Form Through Chance (16 – 20 February 2026). 
• Alison Clarke (Instagram) - A semi-abstract landscape painter based in Wimbledon. She comes from an artistic background, all her life she has been involved in various forms of art expression. She moved to Canterbury to study Fine Art and then spent many years working in photography. She returned to painting in 2019 and likes painting in large gestural strokes and also painting skies. She has had paintings shortlisted for shortlisted for both the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and the Royal West of England Academy Autumn Exhibition. She has a page on her website about her experience LAOTY. 

• Chris Odgers (Instagram) - a UK based artist and an urban designer with over 20 years of experience in master planning, regeneration and design strategies. He has exhibited with the Royal Society of Marine Artists in 2024 and 2025. His aim is to portray light, weather, and place through bold brushwork and atmospheric colour.
• Pauline Patrick (Instagram) - A Glasgow School of Art graduate with postgraduate and doctoral studies in art. Pauline lives in Pittenweem, a fishing village on the east coast of Fife. She is a contemporary still life and landscape painter, influenced by the Scottish Colourist tradition, whose work balances realism and abstraction and is typically painted in oils on linen. She also exhibits at the Pittenweem Arts Festival and with Scotland Art, a leading contemporary art gallery in the centre of Glasgow.

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• Katie Sims (Instagram) - a nature lover and artist from Taunton in Somerset. She has been collaborating with The Thousand Year Trust (TYT), based at Cabilla Woods on Bodmin Moor, Cornwall and creating artwork to raise awareness of the temperate rain forests in the UK.

• Carmen Tsui (Instagram) - a former banker from Hong Kong who now lives in Hindhead in Surrey.
• Steve Vanstone  (Instagram) - a professional artist, working both plein air and in the studion and based in Stroud in Gloucestershire. 

• I saw the exhibition properly i.e. not so full of people that you can't see the art as happened at the PV, 
• photographed the West Gallery - to be uploaded very soon
• started making my notes about the exhibition - for this review - in the new Apple Journal.

The 127th Annual Exhibition of The Pastel Society

• events - and when they're on
• prizes - who won what
• what's different about the 2025 exhibition
• what I liked and....
• ....what I think can be improved

Prizes - who won what

The Prizewinners with their Certificates

This page provides info about the prizewinners.

Winner of The Pastel Society Prize Sunrise behind Tower Bridge by Benjamin Hope PS NEAC ROI RP RSMA

• Caran d'Ache Prize (£1,000 for the best work in the exhibition as selected by Caran d'Ache) 
• Winner: Sheila Goodman PS, Autumn Glory
• Pastel Society Prize - £1,000 for the best work by a member, selected by the Pastel Society Council.
• Winner: Benjamin Hope NEAC PS ROI RP RSMA, Sunrise behind Tower Bridge
• The Yoshimoto Prize £1,000 for an outstanding work in any dry medium by a non-member.
• Winner: Sarah Manolescue ROI, Flowers in the Window