Seascapes In Charcoal at St Margaret's House

This workshop is a companion to Liz Atkin’s solo exhibition Whitstable in Charcoal in the Gallery Cafe at St Margaret’s House (13 January – 24 February 2024), offering the opportunity to explore charcoal techniques and processes in texture, mark making and movement.

We will create seascapes from small to large scale, and together we will create a large collaborative drawing inspired by the textures of the shoreline. The fee includes all art materials.

Liz Atkin’s Whitstable in Charcoal channels her obsession with capturing the sea. Her instinctive gravitation towards texture is a pull that is deeply interconnected with the physical nature of her life-long experience of Compulsive Skin Picking, also known as Dermatillomania, one of a group of Body-focused Repetitive Behaviours. Liz describes its ‘constant energy – there is a real rhythm to it in my body’. Drawing with charcoal is her way to refocus this energy through the speed and control of her hands and fingertips across the page.

For Liz, charcoal possesses a texturally therapeutic quality, a soothing antidote to skin picking’s deeply tactile character. Since moving to Whitstable in 2021, she has been captivated by this coastline, from sea swimming and walking along the shore, to avidly drawing the tidal textures.

Liz Atkin is an artist and educator. She reimagines her Compulsive Skin Picking and anxiety into drawings, photographs and performances. Liz is a mental health advocate and raises awareness for the disorder around the world. She has exhibited and taught in the UK, Europe, Australia, USA, Singapore and Japan. Her artwork and an archive of her advocacy for skin picking is held by the Wellcome Collection.