Child Okeford Art Trail 2026

Friday 28th to Monday 31st August 2026
11 am to 4 pm daily

Our popular Art Trail is now in its sixth year! Once again, we will be hosting 23 talented artists and craftspeople in their own homes, studios and community spaces. The trail offers visitors the opportunity to explore our beautiful village at leisure, allowing you to view and purchase a diverse collection of paintings, prints, pottery, and crafts.

This year, we are welcoming several new and exciting artists to the trail. Barry Hulme paints warm, beautiful watercolours, bringing out the best of this sensitive medium, choosing a great range of subjects from landscapes to luminous interiors, coastal scenes to city centres in different light, capturing atmosphere and moments in time with fantastic skill. He is a winner of the Society for All Artists Amateur Artist of the Year and his work was chosen as Best Professional Landscape & Woodland scene for the SAA (Society of All Artists).

Another new artist also exhibiting in the Community Centre is Holly Berlyn, a local artist specialising in fine liner pointillism, which is a technique of using only dots to create a work. Her unique artworks are inspired by nature and often involve insects, animals and botanicals. Commissions for pet portraits and all animals are also welcome. She enjoys being able to meet and have conversations with people face to face as well getting to discover fellow artists, creators and makers. So do come along and have a chat with her!

There will be a group of eleven artists in the Village Hall where local charity SERO (raising money for Julia’s House Children’s Hospice) will be offering light refreshments, homemade cakes and sandwiches throughout the four days. Julie Little will be selling her paintings, with all proceeds adding to their funds.

Another new talented village resident who is exhibiting in the Village Hall is Nick Selby Bennet whose sporting and rural cartoons are inspired by the events and folk of the British countryside. With a love for rural life, he enjoys nothing more than creating fun and humorous cartoons to brighten up the home or as gifts for friends and loved ones.

Alongside him will be Jesse Marshall a jeweller who claims to have a ‘wildly overactive imagination’ and lovingly handcrafts magical works from silver and gold.

We are lucky to have Rose Hatcher joining us. Rose is best known for using silk fibres to create joyously colourful images of unlikely botanical specimens.  But she also makes ‘Rubbish’ Jewellery, using beach finds or locally salvaged scrap, all set off with semi-precious stones, or vintage beads.  Not forgetting the Weaving and the Bookbinding! So many talents!

With such a wide variety of artists, from painters to jewellers, photographers to potters and much more, there is something to interest everyone. The trail provides an opportunity to meet talented artists in person in their creative worlds and discover new and surprising aspects of their work.

Follow us on social media for artist profiles and more information about the trail and pick up a leaflet from a variety of locations for details about all participants. You can find us on Facebook at Child Okeford Art Trail 2026 and on Instagram at childokefordarttrail2026.

Event Code: [COVW]