Sarah Jane Richards’ compact solo exhibition at Nettle Café in Port Sunlight is a refreshing reminder that everywhere benefits from art.
Her project, walk, draw, paint is what it says on the tin, but it feels deeper than that. It’s like a set incentive to get to know the world beneath your feet properly. Here, that’s reflected back with imagined structures, in imagined spaces, depicting the feeling of walks, without losing the intimacy between you and the artist and the space.
The structures are inaccessible, elevated, and removed from the earth. Connected to, and suspended within tree canopies, they feel like distinct human interventions, but welcome ones, private ones.
The act of walking is something I’ve been focussed on lately. Like Sarah Jane Richards says of her own work, its nostalgic, romantic, idealised. That might be the man-made elements here, acting as tree houses and play spaces, but you can just as easily apply that to the act of walking itself.
So subjectively, they’re easy to get lost in, and apply part of your own consciousness to, but objectively, they’re beautifully composed, gently formed paintings of spaces you’ll never know, but that could be infinitely helpful to how to understand space.
Also, if you’re sitting down with a coffee, it’s a million times better than staring at a blank wall, and every café in the city should make space for artists like this.
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Sarah Jane Richard’s work is on display at Nettle Café until 31st March 2026
Words, Kathryn Wainwright
