Studio Number: 2
What3Words: ///reacting.simply.spindles
Julie is an award-winning artist and visual storyteller whose work draws on imagination, memory, and lived experience. She reveals the extraordinary within the ordinary, creating narratives that engage both visible and unseen worlds. Her paintings explore themes of wonder and hope, balancing personal intimacy with universal resonance. Each work invites stillness and reflection, expressing her deep connection to nature and solidarity with all living things.
Julie’s work is held in private collections and has been widely exhibited, including the John Ruskin Awards, Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize, Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Exhibition, and all four Scottish exhibiting societies. She completed a large-scale permanent public commission and was selected for the inaugural Scottish Landscape Awards.
Questions to the Big Beyond
Illustration, Writing & Mixed Media
Rachel Stewart is a mixed-media illustrator, writer and community activist whose work spans children’s storytelling, creative community engagement and heritage crafts. She also runs the local community choir, The Aberlady Singers, which brings people of all ages together through shared voices and creativity.
Currently, Rachel is stepping outside her comfort zone to work on an adult novella drawn from personal experiences. When she’s not writing, she can usually be found experimenting with paper and exploring new ways to let stories take shape.
Rachel is the project lead for the Aberlady Wild Goose Chase Art Trail, a proposed permanent public art trail of ceramic tiles depicting geese. The trail will invite residents and visitors to explore Aberlady through playful discovery while celebrating the village’s natural heritage—particularly the Greylag and Pink-footed geese that gather at Aberlady Bay Nature Reserve.
The craft de-stash stall, held at The Old Aberlady Inn as part of the Aberlady Open Studios weekend, is raising funds to support this new community art initiative. Come along to find out more and thank you for your support.
Printmaking
Kate is a print and pattern maker. She is inspired by the natural world and her work is a celebration of the native flora and fauna of the British Isles and in particular Scotland (where her studio is based). Sustainability and craft are at the heart Kate's design ethos. Her work is stocked in galleries and shops throughout the UK, including TOAST and John Lewis, and has been featured in Contry Living Magazine several times. Kate studied art and design at Central Saint Martins and Wimbledon School of Art.
