Viva Lewes Issue #151 April 2019

OUR SPACE
Photos by Eleanor Knight
Sheds on the Nev
Flights of fancy
Stride up over the ridge at Landport Bottom,
under a sky trilling with larks, and you see them.
There, under the downward sweep of the sheep
field they nestle in gardens on the fringes of the
town. Pastel-painted, green-roofed, plain timber
or tumbledown, they are unobtrusive outposts of
industry, cabins of contemplation, little huts of
happiness. The Sheds of the Nev.
Whether it’s for the scent of sun-warmed shiplap,
the furtive creak of roofing felt as it stretches to
greet the Spring, or the quiet crunch of last year’s
desiccated insect life underfoot, a shed is a special
place, a sanctuary, a place to create, to build, to
dream. A shed is a fortress for the soul.
“I don’t really have rules in my shed,” says Jonathan
Smith, who paints in his. “Cups of tea are
permissible, and gallery curators are allowed in.
But it’s definitely not a party shed, it’s a working
space. It’s somewhere I can go to travel to the
places I’m working on.” Jonathan is currently
transported to the Hebrides and the shed is full
of blue-violet seas and granite-grey island skies.
The canvases themselves are soon to be transported
to the Kellie Miller Gallery in Brighton.
A few doors along, saxophonist Lisa Guile says,
“I don’t mind about the dead woodlice and the
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