We recently visited Sea Interludes, the latest exhibition from Brita Granström and Mick Manning, who, over several decades, have established a body of work tied to place, observation, and a shared working life at their home and studio in Berwick-upon-Tweed.
Granström’s paintings in this exhibition are informed by time spent living on the East Coast. Made in response to regular walks and close observation, they record changes in light, weather, and season. The sea is a recurring subject, either realised in large canvases painted en plein air or glimpsed through a window within one of the artist’s still-life compositions.
Manning’s imagery—often incorporating birds, animals, and plant forms—draws on careful recording of the natural world. There is a clarity to his mixed-media compositions. His work stands in contrast to Granström’s seascapes, together establishing a dialogue between land, sea, and the domestic interior.
A notable aspect of Sea Interludes at Thompson's Gallery in Aldeburgh is the inclusion of material drawn from the artists’ home in Berwick-upon-Tweed. Textiles, wallpapers, and selected objects have been incorporated into the exhibition design. This introduces a sense of domesticity into the gallery space, but the effect is measured rather than theatrical, situating the work within the context of its making without overwhelming it.
The house itself, documented in House & Garden, reflects a similar approach. It is as much a working environment as a domestic one, with surfaces actively used to display the couple’s collection of paintings, prints, and decorative pieces in close arrangement.
This sense of continuity extends throughout the house. Granström and Manning have long treated it as a shared working space rather than a series of separate rooms. Their practice developed alongside parallel careers in children’s book illustration, as well as their individual painting work, and this overlap is evident in how the interior is used.
There is no clear division between where work happens and where life is lived: both artists move between rooms, and the walls carry a mixture of their own pieces alongside works by friends and contemporaries. Granström’s paintings often return to these interiors, where images on the walls reappear within the compositions themselves. Recurring details—such as their lurchers, or wallpapers produced within the St Jude’s community of artists—reinforce a self-contained but evolving visual world, where subject matter and setting remain closely connected.
View our paper goods by Brita Granström and Mick Manning.
Photography by Elena Bazu.
