Whiteknights Studio Trail 2026

We are pleased to once again be one of the chosen venues exhibiting the creative works of local artists for the Whiteknights Studio Trail 2026!

Taking place over the weekend of 13^th and 14^th June from 11.00am to 6.00pm each day, this artistic venture showcases the work of 33 artists across 23 venues and displays exceptional talent in arts and crafts from across Berkshire. Leighton Park School is venue 21 on the trail and will be displaying the work of four artists, including our very own English as an Additional Language (EAL) teacher, Tom Cartmill, and Ged Gast who has a variety of familial links to the school community! You can read more about the exhibitors below. If you would like to join the Studio Trail at Leighton Park please enter the school via the Shinfield Road entrance (sat nav RG2 7DE) and park in Grove car park, immediately on the left as you enter the gates.

Tom Cartmill – Paintings & Drawings

Sculptural works on paper and mixed media paintings characterised by their textured surfaces.

My work explores the tension between structure and fragmentation, and the ways time and process impact memory and perception. Central to my current practice is the grid: a formal structure through which I investigate impermanence, memory, and the fragility of systems. Influenced by ancient-tiled floors, Islamic ceramics, and architectural forms encountered in Sicily and Spain, I draw inspiration from geometric repetition and the silent histories embedded in worn surfaces. Natural processes, weathering, and the surfaces of the built environment all feed into my practice: my work embodying an engagement with time, decay, and the impossibility of completeness: a meditation on transience, memory, and our enduring search for meaning through what remains.

I exhibit widely. Currently, I am showing work at the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh and the Icelandic Embassy, Copenhagen. Previous exhibitions include several selections for the Summer Exhibition at the RA London, as well as the Royal West Academy, Bristol. I have also been twice selected for the Derwent Art Prize ( in London and Paris) . Reading Museum also have 2 of my works in its extensive collection of art. In 2024 I received the Purcell Drawing Prize at the Royal Scottish Academy.

IG: Tom_Cartmill 

Ged Gast - Artist & Educator

I have spent my life working in art & design education, firstly as a secondary teacher and subject leader and then as a subject adviser, inspector and consultant. I am a Past President and Senior Fellow of the National Society for Education in Art and Design (NSEAD) and Patron of Art History in Schools. Throughout my career I have contributed to teacher CPD and Initial Teacher Education while also maintaining my own creative practice, predominantly in sculpture, but at times as a painter, photographer, digital artist and a ceramicist earlier in my career.

I have several links with Leighton Park, visiting regularly as county subject adviser and as close friend to a former Head of Art & Design. My wife taught languages at Leighton Park during her teaching practice in 1978-79 and my daughter taught on the Summer School activities programme for several years.

Currently, I make sculpture, using stone, wood, metal, gold leaf and found materials. I prefer to carve using traditional techniques, assemblage and hand wrought approaches. I create figures, heads and landscape works, seeking to infuse meaning, while exploring conceptual ideas and techniques. My influences are shaped by Medieval carving, the Renaissance and cultural artefacts, reinterpreted in the context of modernism, expressionism and a willingness to explore incongruous relationships.

IG: @gastged

Marianne McCaughey - Jeweller

I am a Danish-born jewellery artist based at the Coach House Studios in Berkshire, creating sculptural contemporary jewellery under the name Harmattan Jewellery. My work is shaped by a lifelong fascination with archaeology, geology, and material culture, drawing inspiration from landscapes, ancient adornment, and the enduring relationship between people and objects. Working primarily in silver and natural stones, I create pieces that sit somewhere between jewellery and small-scale sculpture — objects intended to be lived with and kept over time. Many works explore rhythm, texture, erosion, and balance, often referencing forms that feel excavated, weathered, or carried through history.

Before focusing fully on jewellery, I worked extensively with photography, and this still strongly influences how I think about atmosphere, composition, and narrative. Having previously lived in Cairo, I remain deeply inspired by Middle Eastern craftsmanship, markets, and workshop traditions, as well as the beauty found in human making across cultures and generations.

During the Whiteknights Studio Trail I will be exhibiting a selection of necklaces and sculptural jewellery pieces alongside new work exploring ideas of heirloom, memory, and continuity.

IG:  @harmattan_jewellery    Web: www.harmattanjewellery.com/

Sarah Pye – Painter

Sarah paints freely and intuitively. Working straight on to the canvas in acrylics, either dropped on in thin layers, or heavy impasto.

Her large-scale statement paintings depict wildflower meadows and gardens, woodlands and atmospheric seascapes as nature created, or with the fun and enthusiasm of a vivid imagination. Colour, light and life are always foremost in her mind, and she hopes to remind you of beautiful days and natures perfect views. A self-taught and continually evolving artist Sarah always has something new on the horizon, keeping her work fresh and always uplifting .......she hopes to make you smile, create a window to the world and bring you a breath of fresh air.

Sarah's work can be found in galleries and exhibitions across southern England 

IG:  @sarahpyefineart   Web: www.sarahsart.co.uk     

See more photos from the Foxtrot weekend here! Back to news