We are very pleased to announce that Adibanji Alade, the well known tv artist and presenter, has kindly agreed to take on the role of East Kent Art Society's Honorary President following the death of the previous holder of this office, Fred Cuming RA.

Adebanji Alade, otherwise known as The Addictive Sketcher’, features regularly on the BBC’s The One Show, and can often be found sketching travellers on the London Underground.  He is currently the President of the Royal Society of Oil Painters

He trained at Yaba College of Technology in Nigeria, later obtaining a diploma in portraiture from Heatherley’s School of Fine Art in Chelsea, where he now teaches.

He is also the founder of The Addictive Sketchers Movement (his online art school) where he inspires and teaches students all over the world how to sketch anything they see accurately and confidently.

Adebanji is the president of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters; a full member of The Guild of Fine Art in Nigeria; and in 2014 was elected to the council of the Chelsea Art Society. He also belongs to Urban Sketchers Worldwide and Plein Air Brotherhood.  

His awards include Buxton Spa Sketchbook Award (2014); winner of Pinta Rapido Plein Air Event at Chelsea Town Hall in 2013; winner of Best Painting of a London Scene, Chelsea Art Society in 2010; the Alan Gourley Memorial Award at the Royal Institute of Oil Painters Exhibition 2017, and numerous others.  

Adebanji has a strong following in the US as well as the UK. He writes regularly for The Artist magazine and exhibits with the Royal Institute of Oil Painters. He teaches at the Art Academy, London, and also runs workshops and demos for schools, colleges, universities and art societies.

MARGARET LEES: Watercolourist Member of EKAS

Margaret Lees whom I’ve known for many years and who attended my first Art Group RAGs (Ramsgate Art Group students) at Concorde in St. Lawrence High Street Ramsgate, in the 90s. She unfortunately passed away relatively quickly after a short illness and I had only visited her a couple of months previously. She kindly gave me a framed watercolour painting by the late Leslie Marsh a former lecturer in watercolour at Canterbury College of Art. She was a very generous artist and a superb watercolorist Most of her friends and relatives had passed away and she just had her neighbour either side of her bungalow who called to see her and her acquaintances in the art world. I was able to spend the last few moments of Margaret’s presence here on earth at her funeral at Thanet Crematorium with half dozen of her old RAGs members and her two neighbours and it was a very quiet and peaceful send-off but I'm sure she would have appreciated that we her fellow art friends were there for the funeral. She was a very traditional watercolorist and had over the past few years taken up oil painting. Margaret always sold at least one or two of her original paintings in any exhibition and I believe her work has been bought and taken to many parts of the world and can be found in private and public collections. Many appreciated her take on the English and some continental landscapes. Many other Art Group Exhibitions will miss her traditional style of painting especially in East Kent.

RIP Margaret thank you for bringing so much colour into our lives!. Fred Fielder, Hon. Chairman