Art critic and presenter Andrew Graham-Dixon and Mark Bills, Director of Gainsborough’s House will delve into the history of art and creativity in East Anglia.

This region has been home so many talented and influential artists from Thomas Gainsborough and John Constable to Maggi Hambling, Dame Elisabeth Frink, Elsa James and Grayson Perry, with more and more new exciting artists emerging from East Anglia each year. 

Join Andrew and Mark to explore why the region radiates such creativity, building homegrown talent but also attracting a myriad of creative talents who adopt the East Anglia as their home.

Why do countryside and coastal landscapes of the region continue to inspire artists across the world? What role has 18^thcentury artist Gainsborough played in cultivating the creativity of the area today? And what’s next for creativity in this region?

Mark and Andrew will also discuss the refurbishment of Gainsborough’s house and it’s new three storey development in Sudbury, Suffolk.

About our speakers

Mark Bills

Mark Bills has been Gainsborough’s House Director since 2013 when he initiated the capital project, Reviving an Artist’s Birthplace, A National Centre for Gainsborough. He has over thirty years’ experience in the museums and galleries sector after studying fine art at the Slade and art history postgraduate research at Manchester University.

Mark was a curator at the Russell-Cotes, Senior Curator of Paintings, Prints and Drawings at the Museum of London and Curator at Watts Gallery, where he worked on the Hope capital project and subsequent development in rescuing G F Watts’ Studio at Limnerslease. He has published widely on eighteenth and nineteenth century British art, and toured exhibitions internationally initiating the first exhibitions of Thomas Gainsborough in Holland, Germany, and Russia. 

Andrew Graham-Dixon

Born in London in 1960, Andrew Graham-Dixon is one of the leading art critics and presenters of arts television in the English-speaking world. He has presented numerous landmark series on art for the BBC and other independents; and has a long history of public service in the field of the visual arts. Andrew has written a number of books about art and artists – his most recent was a biography of Caravaggio, and he is currently working on a similarly in-depth project about Vermeer.

Andrew lectures and tours all over the world with many different audiences, and has been a visiting professor for the Guardian Masterclass in Journalism in partnership with Lincoln University, and is an Ambassador for the Princes Teaching Institute.