Discover Hastings through the distinctive eye of photographer Nico Vromans. In Colours of Hastings, people, colour and place come together in a compelling visual story of everyday life in this historic seaside town.
Hannah Birkett lives and works in Hastings, leading the BA Fine Art and MA Contemporary Arts Practice courses at University Centre Hastings. A graduate of the Royal Academy Schools, she juggles exhibiting with motherhood.
Her work is characterised by an interest in online culture, memory and art-making as life praxis.
James is an academic oil painter based in Hastings Old Town. He specialises in figurative work, portraits, animal studies and landscapes using traditional techniques and materials. He draws inspiration from baroque art and 17th century masters. Largely self taught, James spent 20 years working as a diplomat, before moving to focus full time on art in 2023.
Annie Soudain creates distinctive linocuts inspired by the landscapes, wildlife and changing light of East Sussex. Working predominantly with the demanding reduction linocut technique, each print is built from a single block, carefully cut away and printed in successive layers of colour. The process is both technically exacting and beautifully unforgiving, making every edition unique and impossible to reproduce once the block is complete.
Born in Kent and educated at Canterbury and Brighton, Annie has spent much of her life living and working on the Sussex coast. The marshes, cliffs, beaches and hedgerows of Fairlight, Pett Level, Rye Harbour and Romney Marsh provide an enduring source of inspiration, reflected in images that celebrate both the drama and the quiet intricacies of the natural world.
An acclaimed printmaker and former art teacher, Annie has exhibited widely as a member of the Sussex Guild, the Rye Society of Artists and the Society of Botanical Artists, and her work is held in private collections across the UK, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and the United States.
This exhibition at The Crown, Hastings brings together a selection of Annie's vibrant linocuts, each revealing her remarkable eye for colour, pattern and place. Rich in atmosphere and crafted with exceptional skill, these works invite us to look more closely at the landscapes and wildlife that surround us, and to discover the extraordinary beauty within the familiar.
This month's exhibition is a collaboration of recent work by Merv & Jo.
Posters, cartoons, drawings, musings from the drawing board & sketchbook.
Inspired by Hastings, old postcards and posters, time by the sea and Jo's expressions from her 107-year old Nana's advice on living a good long life.
We hope you enjoy exploring these exhibits as much as we have enjoyed creating them.
All original drawings on display are available to purchase. Most pieces are also available as limited-edition prints upon request.
Joanna Neary from Cornwall, now based in E. Sussex. Comedian, writer, and artist. @wifeonearth
Merv. Once Hastings Old town, now on the beach, Pevensey bay. pen & ink, cartoonist... @mervsdailydiary
The Crown Hastings is hosting a special art exhibition, an open call, in support of Sustenance, the St Leonards charity working to tackle food insecurity across the local area. Featuring work by local artists on the theme of Food, Sharing and Community, the exhibition explores the role that food plays in bringing people together and strengthening neighbourhood connections. Every piece will be sold for £50, with 100% of the proceeds going directly to Sustenance to support its work providing food, meals and practical help to those who need it most. The exhibition offers a simple way for people to support a vital local charity while taking home an original piece of art created by members of the Hastings and St Leonards creative community.
The show will run throughout the month of July 2026, with an opening drinks event on Monday 6th July from 4-6pm.
To add your piece of artwork to the show please email hello@thecrownhastings.co.uk.
Marta was born in Valencia, Spain and moved in the late seventies to the UK and grew up here. She graduated from Camberwell College of Art in 1999 and moved to Hastings with her small family in 2007.
She loves drawing. Her inspiration, she says, comes from everywhere but mostly from nature and real life experiences. She is interested in combining dreams with reality to create images which are instinctive, fresh and mysterious.
She works part time as an art facilitator for various events and organisations but mostly for Arts on Prescription, running YOYO, a family & children's art group at Art in the Park. She is at her happiest when surrounded by other people creating and bringing together ideas and a sense of community but nothing beats the silence of a busy mind producing beautiful drawings in the studio. She has found the perfect balance of the loneliness of an artist and the creative energy of working with others, she feels lucky.
She is currently working on a children's book "Jabali" which she hopes to get published soon.
Neil is a designer and illustrator, based in Hastings, with a deep love for imagined characters, bold colour and playful antics. The work here is influenced by the mischief, mayhem and merriment associated with Spring/Summer and the festivities of Jack in the Green - especially his rambunctious Bogies. This marks Neil’s first exploration of working in wood, and only his second exhibition.
This is Cat’s first solo show since her time in Portland, where she exhibited a collection of paper plants and insects (Specimens at Nucleus Gallery). For this latest show she has created a series of characters, creatures and masks, partially inspired by Jack In The Green. The framed paper characters are all poseable and the scenery behind them is removable, so each scene can be taken out of the frame and displayed or played with. The masks are a mix of animals and fantastical floral creatures, made using felt, paper and papier mache/epoxy clay on cardboard.
Ibi Meier-Oruitemeka is a self taught painter based in Hastings. Her work explores themes of human connection and the ways individuals influence and shape one another. Meier-Oruitemeka had her debut solo exhibition, Soft Mirrors, in 2024 at Big Yin Gallery, and her work sits in the permanent collection at the University of Cambridge. Her practice continues to evolve as a deeply personal yet universal meditation on relationships, resilience, and the shared human experience.