June 2026
Book Launch and Exhibition – Essential Information
Date: Thursday 18 June
Venue: The Red House, Golf Lane, Aldeburgh, IP15 5PZ (tel: 01728 451700)
During the Festival, the Painting Britten exhibition takes place in the Pond Gallery, Snape Maltings; 14–25 June 10.30–5.30 pm (closed on18 June).
On Thursday 18 June about 80 of the paintings will be transported from the Pond Gallery to Aldeburgh (10 minutes drive) and exhibited in a marquee on the croquet lawn at The Red House, Britten and Pears' old home. The house is surrounded by five acres of beautiful gardens and incorporates Britten's composing studio, the library and the fascinating Archive Centre. Seven of the paintings will be displayed in the environs of The Red House itself, the library and studio. The rest will be displayed in the marquee.
Doors open from 10.30–4.30 pm. Free entry to the marquee includes refreshments, served at 12 noon and 2 pm, with short introductory speeches at each of these times, and music played by renowned oboist Nick Daniel.
Paintings, books and cards will be for sale; and Jane will be signing copies of the book 'Painting Britten:100 Visions of the Music'.
No ticket is needed for the marquee, but please obtain a white sticker from the gazebo at the main entrance, circular drive as you arrive. For tours of the house, please obtain an entry ticket at Reception.
Travel Information
By car
From the A12, take the A1094 to Aldeburgh. Carry on for about ten minutes until you reach a roundabout in Aldeburgh, with a group of small supermarkets on your right. Take the first exit, the B1122 to Leiston.. Drive for about two more minutes. Golf Lane is the second turning on the left, directly opposite the brown sign directing you to ‘The Red House’. Users of satnav and online mapping systems beware: you may be misdirected into Linden Close, from where there is no access to the Red House site.
Parking will be available outside 'Home Reach' house in Golf Lane (signed; the house immediately before The Red House); at The Red House (around the circular drive and through to the old tennis court), and a bit further along Golf Lane, by the Administration block – car park 2. All of these are on the left as you drive from Aldeburgh along the Leiston Road, turning into Golf Lane. The golf course is on your right. There is a disabled space in car park 2.
By foot
It takes approximately 30 minutes to walk to The Red House from the Moot Hall. There are various routes from town but the most direct is from Victoria Road, past Aldeburgh Parish Church. At the roundabout take the exit onto Leiston Road (as above). Carry on walking down this road until you reach the brown sign for The Red House (the pavement is on the right-hand side only). Continue walking down Golf Lane until you reach the white gates of The Red House.
Visitors Book
Entries date from Jane's first exhibition in Aldeburgh in 1997. Please sign it, in the marquee.
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lMay 2026
Painting Britten : A collection of 100 paintings
Pre-sales began at 10 am on Saturday 16 May and extend until 6 pm on Friday 22 May. Pre-sales are offered exclusively to members of my mailing list, prior to the launch of the exhibition and book at the Aldeburgh Festival on 18 June.
I have circulated a link to a pre-sales page by email to my mailing list members and requests for artworks are being dealt with strictly in order of receipt.
Anyone who joined my mailing list before 16 May is eligible for this offer.
For future information and offers, do join the list by emailing a request to me at janemackay@btinternet.com.
Image opposite: – framed painting: A Midsummer Night's Dream, op. 64
April 2026
Only two months to go until June! Plans are now well underway way though there is still much to organise. I have 100 paintings stacked up at home, all framed and awaiting labels and certificates of authenticity. The latter will accompany each painting as a guarantee of the provenance of each work.I have decided to keep the Peter Grimes, op. 33 painting for my own collection, but have just had delivery of some superb reproductions of this painting. A limited edition of 30 archival prints, of the exact same size as the painting, and on museum quality 'William Turner' paper will be released in May. The prints have been made by Art4site (in Wye, Kent) who excel in fine art printing. Also in May, I will be offering painting pre-sales, exclusively to my mailing list members. Details will be circulated by email in early May. If you would like to join my mailing list, please complete the form on the 'contact' page of this website.
Finalised arrangements for the book launch event at The Red House, Aldeburgh on 18 June will be circulated to my mailing list members by email later in May; I'll also post these on this website in due course.
Painting Britten project – update
One hundred watercolours, finished at the end of September, have now been framed at 'The Framing Room'; a company run by Jacob Everett situated in Brockley, south London. A highly recommended business; I could not be more delighted with how the paintings look. The remaining 75 framed paintings were delivered at the end of February. All 100 are now here at my home/studio, awaiting photographing, measuring, labelling, pricing and – eventually– bubble-wrapping for transport to Aldeburgh. I need a larger house!
In collaboration with the Bittern Press, based in Suffolk, we are nearing the completion of a book of the paintings, which will be launched on Thursday, 18 June during the 2026 Festival at Britten's former home, The Red House. The book, 'Painting Britten', will be A5-size; soft-backed, approximately 240 pages, with each painting accompanied by a commentary written by Andrew Plant.
All the original paintings will be for sale. The paintings and the book (together with a second Bittern publication: a book about the history of the Festival) can be viewed and purchased at the launch event which will be open to all. Please sign up to my newsletter for further information and for details of the launch, by joining my mailing list via the 'Contact' page on this website.
The 77th Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts runs from 12–28 June 2026. I will be there throughout and hope to see many old and new friends during the fortnight. Don't miss the biggest party of 2026!
An image (R) of my studio. Rows of liquid acrylic paints on the shelf, and colour swatches of mixed purples, blues and greens.
NEWS FROM PREVIOUS YEARS
Another outing for Britten paintings in Finland
On 12th March 2023, my images of the Third Suite for Cello (Britten) were used again in a repeat of the Britten-Shostakovitch concert performed in Finland last summer. In a church (pictured) in Helsinki, cellist Lauri Kankkunen performed the solo piece. Next to him was a large screen depicting my paintings of each movement of the work as the music progressed. The photo shows the first movement of the piece: Lento (Introduzione).
‘A Picture of Health' January 9–13 2023
In January, I contributed a triptych of oil paintings to a project entitled ‘ A Picture of Health’ – an experimental venture which aimed to employ art-science to explore what this phrase means to society today.
The project was initially launched in 2019 by the Medical Research Council (MRC) London Institute of Medical Sciences (LMS) to collect interpretations from a cross section of society, to be published in a book of the same title. A range of people were asked to contribute their creations, from healthcare and community workers, scientists, artists, politicians, LMS staff, and well known faces including the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, author Ben Okri, playwright Willy Russell and poet Michael Rosen.
To celebrate the publication of ‘A Picture of Health’ the MRC LMS hosted an exhibition of these artworks in January 2023, on the top floor of a new state-of-the-art MRC LMS research building on the Hammersmith Hospital Campus. Panel discussions involving project contributors, LMS and MRC researchers and Imperial College academics took place over three days. ‘Picture of Health’ was the very first event to be held in this exciting new building. I was honoured and delighted to have been asked to take part.
For more information about my paintings for this project and my entry in the book, please visit:
https://stories.lms.mrc.ac.uk/jane-mackay/index.html
10/6/22
Kangasala Classic Music Festival, Finland 16–19 June 2022
I was very pleased to be asked to supply images of all thirteen paintings in my series of Britten Third Suite for Cello for this music festival in Finland. The painting images will be projected on to a big screen during a concert which features this work. They will also be used in the concert programme, together with background information about the paintings and their creation.
For more information about this concert, see the weblink https://www.kangasalaclassic.fi/sielunveljet . (A translation of the Finnish can be organised using Google translate).
30/6/19
Rachel Vogeleisen, photographer, specialises in portraiture, seeing her work as a collaboration with her subject telling the best story about themselves. I took part in her project celebrating 'Women over 50 who reinvented themselves': a series of photographs aiming to inspire women of all ages to realise their dreams.
The portraits were exhibited at the Brick Lane Gallery Portraits Exhibition (27 June—8 July 2019) and the photo below shows me with my portrait at the private view of the show. The painting I am holding is Hare in a Snare, not a 'music-painting' but a protest against the horrific practice of ensnaring wild animals.
14/3/19
In February we created a new festival of art, music and discussion, Aesynth, held at the In-Spire Galerie, Dublin. The aim of the festival was to explore the phenomenon of synaesthesia through concerts, an exhibition of music paintings, panel discussion and film sessions. An account of our festival will follow in due course but, for the time being, our website www.aesynth.ie will give you an idea of what took place.
The panel members assemble for the session on synaesthesia at the Aesynth Festival. L to R: Tay Aziz (Chair), Prof Fiona Newell, Dr Andrew Plant, Siobhán Doyle, Dr Ciarán Crilly and Jane Mackay
Photo: Richard Roche