Dream comes true for Weston's Rebecca Stamp who has opened Apple Tree House Studio

She’s always been passionate about art, so it’s a dream come true for Rebecca Stamp to open her own studio, offering workshops, classes and tuition to those of all ages.

Rebecca launched Apple Tree House Studio, at her home in Weston, just before the Covid pandemic but after reopening properly at the start of this year, she’s thrilled with the response to her weekly and monthly sessions.

“I’ve been passionate about art my whole life, since I was little,’ says Rebecca, who was head of Boston High School’s art department for 20 years.

“Whatever I did, it was always creative, but growing up I never thought I’d be a teacher.

“I was doing some illustration for myself and for other companies and then went into a few primary schools to deliver some workshops. I just loved working with the children and that’s what inspired me to complete my teacher training. I love teaching, but I always knew I wanted my own studio too, and when we started building our house we added it onto the plans.”

Rebecca still works part-time in the art department at Boston High and runs her classes on her days off, evenings and at weekends.

These include creative sessions for children aged seven and over, create and make for four-to-seven-year-olds, plus pre-GCSE, GCSE skills workshops, drawing classes, tuition, expressive large-scale paintings, private group bookings and birthday parties.

During lockdown, Rebecca used the time to post clips of projects people could complete at home online and developed a large following.

“I had high hopes for the studio, but you never know what’s going to happen,” she says. “Things are really thriving – I have families coming in together, people who’ve never drawn or painted before and parents working with their children. It’s lovely to see.

“I absolutely love art, but I also love imparting that to other people and seeing the joy they get from it. The workshops are filling up really quickly – and in some cases I’m having to put on extra ones to accommodate everyone.

“I think people have started to realise that art and creative activities can really help in terms of mental health, wellbeing and anxiety too, especially after the past couple of years we’ve all had.”

Sessions last up to two hours, with Rebecca’s studio accommodating groups of up to 11 people. All her classes highlight the natural world and environment as this is another of her passions.

“It’s not just about art, but the way we live, the way we appreciate nature,’ she adds. “All of my workshops connect with the environment and nature in some way.

‘It’s really important to me; it helps to engage children – and adults– to get them to look at the world around them and appreciate nature and the environment.

“We’re recycling materials, thinking about ways in which we’re using materials and that comes into every session. I try to keep them seasonal too – related to what’s going on at the time.”

Rebecca is constantly coming up with new ideas and also hopes to start offering monthly classes to primary school teachers, linked to the national curriculum, so they can take ideas back to their classrooms too.

- To find out more, follow @appletreehousestudio on Facebook.

I was really pleased with how my own picture turned out

Aside from a few cartoon video tutorials during lockdown, it’s been a while since I attempted any serious artwork, so I was really looking forward to visiting Rebecca’s studio, with my 12-year-old daughter, to try our hand at drawing with walnut ink.

There were eight of us in the session and Rebecca quickly put us all at ease, showing us what we would be creating – a forest-scape, using the ink which she makes from walnuts, from the trees in her garden. It has a wonderful glossy texture, deep aromatic smell and can be treated like watercolour paint and thinned down to make it lighter.

Rebecca carefully guided us through each stage, from drawing out our initial picture with pencil, to creating a base wash with the ink, before adding in and highlighting the finer details.

She has an infectious enthusiasm for the creative arts and was on hand to offer guidance and advice as to how we might improve our pictures as we progressed.

It was a wonderfully relaxing session, and lovely to see all the fabulous pieces produced by everyone else too. The ink was interesting to work with and thanks to Rebecca’s step by step approach, I was really pleased with how my own picture turned out too.

She’s certainly helped bring out my creative side and we’ll definitely be going back to try another of her workshops very soon.