Pearl Bates (continued)

She turns these mental images and sketches into oil paintings in her studio. “The image metamorphizes into what emerges when I’m painting,” she says. The results are highly glamorous. I put it to her that Lewes is not that glamorous a place. “Oh I don’t know about that,” she replies. “It depends on how you look at it. There are so many people doing interesting things. We’ve even got a castle, for god’s sake.”

Pearl left Lewes in the early nineties, and lived in London and New York. She did a degree in fashion design, and made costumes for TV and film. She moved back to England a couple of years ago, and stayed with her parents ‘for a couple of months, to find my feet again in the country before moving to London.’ She never made that move. “Lewes has changed in the last ten years,” she says. “A lot of people complain of people who’ve moved in from London, but they’ve brought a lot with them. I just found I liked it here again, and the longer I stayed, the more I realised I was going to stay”. She exhibited in Artwave last year, in her own studio. “I sold a lot, to the Alfriston Gallery, which has now moved to Lindfield. I did well.” I ask her if she will be around to talk about her art during Artwave. She decides on the spot. “I’ll be in the shop on the opening day,” she says. “In the afternoon.”