New South Downs exhibition opens at Petersfield Museum

A captivating set of chalk pastel drawings reflecting the fragile beauty of the South Downs goes on display this month in a new exhibition.

“Sara Lee: Chalk Lines. Drawings from the South Downs” opens at Petersfield Museum and Art Gallery on 14 January and will run until 18 April.

It comes after Lee walked the South Downs Way, drawing, writing and documenting her journey.

The resulting new chalk pastel drawings will be featured alongside Lee’s rarely seen field notes and sketchbooks and a new short film about her.

Lee is the first recipient of the South Downs Open held at Petersfield Museum and Art Gallery in 2024 and was awarded a solo exhibition.

Louise Weller, Head of Collections and Exhibitions, said: “We’re delighted to be showing new work by Sara Lee, an artist with a national reputation whose work connects to our mission to bring history, art and landscape into vibrant dialogue, celebrating creativity, collaboration and community.”

It comes as the gallery has been awarded £35,000 from the national Art Fund to realise a long-held ambition to create a community-led platform dedicated to the artist Flora Twort (1893–1985).

Twort was an English painter who specialised in watercolours and pastels of the scenes and people of Petersfield.

The project will reimagine how we care for and share the extensive art collection she produced over six decades.

Louise added: ‘It has been a challenging few years for the museum sector, and as Petersfield Museum and Art Gallery looks ahead to the next 25 years, we are eager to reimagine how people can access the collections in our care and use them as a source of inspiration. This crucial funding from Art Fund will enable us to take the next steps in essential conservation, cataloguing, and digitisation efforts to establish a digital platform accessible to everyone.”