Our Heathfield Art Appreciation group met for the first time in March 2023 with a meet and greet at Noakes cafe in Heathfield. Following on from this we set monthly meetings starting in April when we all spoke briefly about a favourite piece of art. It was a really interesting meeting with so much variety, for example, a personal miniature painted by an artistic friend to pottery. We continued this theme for our May meeting. In June we decided to focus now on a famous artist and chose Pablo Picasso. Each member presented different aspects of his life, for example, Picasso's early years, his stage designs and his sculptures, we followed this up in July with Picasso's interest in African Masks, cubism, later life and a look at Guernica. There is always lots of discussion and comments. We are all learning so much.

Update: August 2025

It is now more than 2 years since our first Art Appreciation meeting. Over this period we have introduced a more structured approach to our monthly meetings. We decided to each present an artist beginning in time with Prehistoric Art, moving through Ancient Art, Medieval Art, the Renaissance, Mannerism, Baroque, Rococo, Romanticism, Impressionism to currently Post Impressionist artists. What a fabulous journey through art we have experienced.

The timetable of our meeting has evolved as well. We begin at 10am with 2 members giving a presentation each of about 20 minutes followed by discussion, a short morning tea break followed by 2 more members giving their presentations. We upload our pictures of the artist and their work to complement our presentations showing them on a TV screen at our meeting. This has been a great success.

We have also now reached our maximum number of members (8) for our group.

If however anyone is interested in having their name on our waiting list please make contact. If there are enough new interested members we could consider starting up a second Heathfield Art Appreciation group.

Or suggest contacting other local U3a Art Appreciation groups that may have a vacancy.