I am collaborating with Burgh House & Hampstead Museum to run a couple of free outdoor drawing/painting workshops for adults on Sunday 27 June as part of the Community Fun Day on Hampstead Heath run by Heath Hands https://www.heath-hands.org.uk to celebrate the 150th Anniversary of the Hampstead Heath Act which preserved the Heath for the public and marked the beginning of the protection of open spaces as sanctuaries for nature, people and communities. This is still important for us all today, as we have discovered in particular since the pandemic. I want to encourage people to look more closely, at their surroundings, to discover Nature both close and far.

I have appropriated Ruskin’s famous dictum “She who can paint a leaf can paint the world”. Start from the simplest object, whatever is closest to you – a simple leaf, and then look beyond to the surrounding landscape of trees, wild flowers, ponds with ducks and swans, people of all ages sitting on benches, walking, running or playing sport, a panorama of London and its changing skies and much more – the Heath offers the widest possible variety of subjects.

You do have to book as places are limited – www.burghhouse.org.uk – see under “Events”, but I am also prepared to give some guidance and an information sheet for people who may just turn up on the day, even if there are no places left: