Visiting Ruth Thomas at 2 North Gardens is an experience in itself. Beat back the bluebells as you manoeuvre up the windy path to the front door, while a dog yelps a greeting from upstairs. Ruth says she’s an ex-teacher, but I prefer to imagine that a career as a torch singer in smoky nightclubs was responsible for her fabulously gravelly voice and laid back, seen-it-all style. She clearly nurtures her artists. There are elegant grey and black ceramics by Ben Barker, cheerful acrylics by Danny Noble and bright silk cushions by Alison Wilkinson. Here I also noticed another madness of metal hares, by Helen Stronge.
At Absolutecreate I’m grabbed by the lush, well-framed (and very reasonable) flower acrylics by Rachel Pearce, and impressed by Mary Jane Ansell’s strong portraits, especially Rose’s Lad, a picture of a skinhead. There are bright, jolly gouaches by children’s illustrator Sue Hendra and unusual one-off leather fashion accessories by Renáta Koch.
Icons. Icons? They weren’t mentioned in the list.
In Albert Road, Roderick Reece is a man of many interests, a student of life and fascinated by Russian icons. He paints about a hundred a year in acrylic on board. His technique came to him in a dream. Even if you’re an iconoclast, do visit. This is one of the few Open Houses where everything redundant hasn’t been fired into the bedroom. That front room seems somehow to convey an impression, Soane-like, of one man’s life.
So there it is. Life’s rich tapestry on the Central Brighton trail, and I didn’t even make it to all seven houses. I doubt that this area of Brighton has seen anything as exotic since the BBC decided that it was a good idea to have The Wombles wombling free around The Lanes as the interval entertainment in the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest. (Is it that time of year again?)

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