People and Places – Revelations of Love. Print collection

This year, my prints turned toward people — in the places I love. Moments of quiet tenderness, sunlit afternoons, shared tea on the beach. From Paris and Picasso to Hove and home, something shifted. Colour deepened: pinks, reds, yellows — emotional, not just visual. Sketchbooks became companions; quick lines caught raw truths. I drew friends, myself, the spaces between — where love sits unannounced. Architecture gave way to fluid brush lines, alive with movement. Julian of Norwich whispered from the past: Revelations of Love. This collection remembers — not just what I saw, but what I felt. People, places, and the light between them.

People and Places: Revelations of Love

Alej Ez, Open House, 14 May 2025, Brunswick Square, Brighton

I wanted to record a few thoughts from the conversations I had with visitors during my Open House this year. I opened my home in Brunswick Square, Brighton, to share a new body of work alongside my existing prints of the South Downs, coastal cliffs, and city scenes. But this year, something shifted. I found myself drawn not just to the places I love, but to the people within them.

Looking back, I think the first spark came in February last year, during a visit to the Picasso Museum in Paris. The museum had recently been renovated and displayed his work in a powerful, progressive sequence. You could really trace the evolution of his vision — from early, more realistic portraits to the cubist transformations that redefined how we see the human figure. I was especially struck by how this shift from representation to abstraction seemed to reveal something inner — the soul, the emotional structure, the spirit of the subject. Picasso was born in Málaga, like much of my mother’s family, so perhaps there was a resonance there too.

Then, in May, there was another moment. My friend Sarah Arnett, also an artist, invited me to spend a summer’s day with her and her mother on the beach in Hove. Her beach hut sits right on the promenade, facing the sea. That afternoon was full of beauty and calm: her mother, Helen, was resting in the shade, protected by a screen; Sarah gazed out peacefully to sea. We sat at a small wooden table laid for tea, the sunlight falling gently across their faces. I remember thinking, “This is something I want to keep. This tenderness — this quiet, everyday love between mother and daughter, and the friendship I was lucky to share in — it needs to be held.” That evening I drew, not just to record, but to recover the emotional truth of that moment.

The colour palette I used — rich pinks, reds, yellows, and deep blues — began to develop earlier that year. I’d been invited to take part in a small residency by the Gertrude’s Garden Artist Cooperative, at the Rottingdean Heritage site. The group is named in homage to Gertrude Jekyll, who collaborated with Edward Lutyens on garden design. We gathered in the garden to draw and respond to the space. I made a view combining flowers and architecture, and later in the studio, I experimented with vivid, saturated colour — bold and slightly wild. It was an experiment, but it opened something. I used this approach later for the drawing of Sarah and Helen. The colours seemed to express not only the warmth of the sun but the emotional warmth of the moment.

This palette became even more assertive after a visit to the British Library exhibition Medieval Women in Their Own Words, where I was particularly moved by the manuscript illustrations and their powerful, sometimes otherworldly use of colour.

In parallel, my drawing process has evolved. I still begin with ink — often using brushes to create expressive, flowing lines. These are scanned and then colour is added digitally. For years I used very fine linework, influenced by my background in architecture, but more recently I’ve allowed my lines to become thicker, more varied, more alive — allowing colour and line to dance together, to convey mood and movement as well as form. These drawings are not complete outlines but suggestive frames — containers for emotion and light.

A major shift has also come from my sketchbook practice. For the past couple of years, I’ve carried a sketchbook everywhere. Rather than taking photographs to work from later, I’ve started drawing on the spot — in pencil, ink, whatever is to hand. These quick responses allow me to play with perspective, composition, and emotion — capturing something immediate, personal, and raw. Many of these sketches became the foundations for larger works. Even after I’ve developed them into finished prints, I return to the original sketchbook pages. Their honesty and simplicity often hold something irreplaceable — like a haiku, a song lyric, or a nursery rhyme.

The transition to adding colour within the line drawings began with a small series I did at home — self-portraits, really, of myself at the table drawing, taking a shower, having breakfast in bed. They were meant as exercises, but I used brushwork and played with colour and line weight, and to my surprise, a few of them caught the attention of buyers. That response made me think: perhaps I’m on the right track. Perhaps there’s something in these intimate, autobiographical interiors that others can connect to — something universal.

It reminds me of how artists, at a certain point, begin to turn inward — to explore their own experience. It’s partly about the awareness of time passing, perhaps even of mortality. But it’s also a wish to leave something behind — to say, “This is who I was. This is what I loved. This is how I saw.” If you’re a writer, you write a book. If you’re a poet, you write a poem. If you’re a graphic artist like me, you draw. And sometimes, you draw yourself.

That’s why I called this collection People and Places: Revelations of Love. The title is borrowed from Julian of Norwich, a 14th-century anchoress whose Revelations of Divine Love was one of the earliest known books in English written by a woman. I discovered it at that same British Library exhibition. Julian described domestic, intimate experiences — moments when love, both human and divine, was revealed in quiet ways. It gave me a framework. These prints are scenes of the people I love, in the places I’ve come to know and return to — moments of affection, friendship, family, and stillness — captured in the city I live in and around the Sussex coast.