FRESH AIR
Max in his Studio. Photography by Lily Bungay
ARTISTS FOREWORD
These paintings came from an internal need for peace, in an attempt to create something quiet and calming for myself. Each painting was sparked by a clear idea in the landscape, and through a long process of discovery and meditation they were distilled into something which represented the essence of that initial spark. I spend a lot of time thinking about each piece, away from the brushes, moulding the compositions in my mind over time. When I'm painting, I'm guided by those feelings, my memory, and a drive to capture my connection to a place or a mood. Any reference material becomes secondary to my emotional memory of the landscape.
When I began working towards this exhibition, I was interested in what happens when I start to force my own ideas into the landscape; swapping colours, taking out objects, moving hedgerows and trees, clearing everything artificial or stale out of the frame, all to enhance that sense of peace I long for — whilst allowing my emotions, hesitations, and curiosities to blossom from the palette knife to the paint surface. The inspiration lives between moments in time: things half remembered, sensed, warped, rather than copied or rendered. Making this work meant slowing down, trusting my process, and making a choice to paint things which made my world feel less chaotic and fragile. I hope the paintings help people find the same peace I did when I painted them.
Max White, 2026
Please see the online catalogue below. For full artwork details, click the image. On a phone, tap the very small dot in the bottom-right corner of the screen to view the artwork details.
WORKSHOPS
Date: Wednesday 14th October 2026
Time: 5:00 - 8:00 pm
Venue: The Gallery at Green & Stone
Tickets: £150
Join artist Minna Williams for a hands-on exploration of traditional drypoint printmaking.
Working from a seasonal still life of fruit and vegetables, you’ll learn the fundamentals of drypoint, exploring line, texture and repetition while creating a series of small-scale prints. You’re also welcome to bring along a small kitchen-themed object or image to use as inspiration.
The workshop takes a professional printmaking process and brings it into the contemporary kitchen studio, demonstrating how prints can be created without a traditional printing press. Using a simple pasta roller, Minna will guide you through the process of preparing, inking and printing your work, while exploring the unique qualities and possibilities of this accessible approach.
A practical and experimental introduction to drypoint, designed to give you both an understanding of the traditional technique and a process you can continue exploring at home.
All art materials are provided by Green & Stone.
Minna Williams
Minna Williams is an artist and tutor whose practice centres on observational drawing, portraiture, and expressive mark-making. She teaches at the Royal Drawing School and has led workshops for both Kingston University and the Royal Drawing School's Young Artists Programme. Minna's approach encourages participants to move beyond traditional observational drawing, exploring imaginative responses to people, objects, and the spaces around them in a supportive and engaging environment.
To learn more about Michelle, please visit her website Here.
Date: Wednesday 28th October 2026
Time: 6:00 - 8:00 pm
Venue: The Gallery at Green & Stone
Tickets: £30
Join artist Minna Williams for an experimental life drawing session with a Halloween twist. Our model will be dressed in film-set costumes, giving you unusual characters, silhouettes and textures to draw from.
Explore expressive mark-making, movement and different approaches to life drawing through a series of costume-led poses. A playful evening for experimenting with your materials and seeing where the drawing takes you.
All art materials are provided by Green & Stone.
Minna Williams
Minna Williams is an artist and tutor whose practice centres on observational drawing, portraiture, and expressive mark-making. She teaches at the Royal Drawing School and has led workshops for both Kingston University and the Royal Drawing School's Young Artists Programme. Minna's approach encourages participants to move beyond traditional observational drawing, exploring imaginative responses to people, objects, and the spaces around them in a supportive and engaging environment.
To learn more about Michelle, please visit her website Here.
Date: Saturday 14th & 21st November 2026
Time: 10:30am - 4:30pm
Venue: The Gallery at Green & Stone
Tickets: £660
Exploring Tone, Colour & Brushwork
On this course, you will make three painterly studies. Using modern artists as inspiration, you will consider techniques in observation and brushwork while exploring tone and colour.
The course will examine and draw inspiration from 20th- and 21st-century still-life painters including Van Gogh, Matisse, Cézanne, Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and Morandi. Through demonstrations and guidance, you can expect to familiarise yourself with the tools of the oil painter while learning techniques to improve fluency and accuracy in your painting.
On the first Saturday, you will begin with a speedy monochrome oil study to explore the importance of tone and good palette organisation. You will then begin a second oil study using a limited palette, learning to mix subtle hues and explore colour temperature, transparency and opacity, and colour contrast to help you make colour substitutions.
On the second Saturday, you will put your colour-mixing knowledge into practice, making your third and final painting while attempting to mix local areas of colour using an extended cadmium palette. A life model will be provided for this session, giving you the opportunity to apply your developing observational and colour skills.
Structured teaching and demonstrations will be balanced with an approach that encourages playfulness and exploration while painting.
Included with your booking
A special Green & Stone-curated beginners’ oil painting pack, valued at £40
All course materials
Refreshments provided
A 30 minuet light lunch provided each day
Please email us in advance with any dietary requirements or allergies so we can make suitable arrangements for lunch and refreshments.
By the end of the course, you will feel more confident mixing tonal values and hues and using the tools and techniques of the oil painter.
All art materials are provided by Green & Stone.
Rachel Mercer
Born in Cambridgeshire, Mercer studied at Cardiff School of Art and Design graduating in 2012 before being awarded the postgraduate programme at The Royal Drawing School. She is based between London and Oxford. She has exhibited in the UK and China. Stand-out exhibitions include Christie's London (2013), Mercer Chance Gallery and Mandell's Gallery (2018), San Mei Gallery (2019), and Carousel Gallery (2020), Fitzrovia Gallery (2022) and Aleph Contemporary (2023). Her work was Shortlisted for the Ruth Borchard Prize (2021), Waverton Art prize (2022) and prize winner of the Hampstead Art Society prize (2022). She has exhibited in the Hampstead Art society Green&Stone and NEAC open exhibitions (2022,2023,2024,2026) Wells contemporary (2024) and Jackson’s Art Prize (2026). She has had work purchased for the Royal Collection by King Charles and work in the Michael Moritz, Hariette Heyman collection.
People and places are a recurring theme in Mercer’s paintings. At the centre of her approach is an interest in human interaction and observing peoples movements. There is a sense of movement, fluidity, and haptic beauty in the way the figures in her work move and dissolve across the canvas. At times the subject fades into the sensuality of the medium simultaneously creating a sense of disappearance and presence. My recent oil paintings, watercolours and monotypes show gardeners at work, children in playgrounds and crowded shopping centers. I make sketches from observation, these drawings are then supplemented by imagination and rendered as sometimes large-scale layered paintings.
To learn more about Rachel, please visit her website Here.
Rachel’s Instagram, Here.