The House with the Blue Door
ABOUT ME.
Sarah Palmer is an artist known for her illustrated sketchbooks and hand lettering. Her journey began in 2016 when she picked up her first landscape, A4 sketchbook and drew the remote control, and then continued this journey in 2020 when she lost her job and set up her business, The House with the Blue Door, which is inspired by her wooden chalet on the Humberston Fitties.
In her sketchbook work Sarah explores handlettering, nature journaling, sketching and recording the daily details of our everyday lives. Sarah's work and unique style can be seen throughout Grimsby and Cleethorpes in the window of Cleethorpes library, Cambridge Park Sixth form college, Learning4Life and pops up regularly through her collaborations with the Canoe River Cleaner and the Fishing Heritage Centre.
In 2024 Sarah was awarded a Develop Your Creative Practice grant from Arts Council England, which enabled her to do expand on her work around art and mental wellbeing and qualify as an ARTICULATE practitioner with the BAAT. She uses and teaches about art, writing, journaling and mark making to a range of age groups in the community and is passionate about the benefits of reflective art-making for good mental health.
Over the last few years Sarah has designed more than a 200 colouring and reflection sheets using her repeated pattern styles and pops up regularly at events with her tins of felt-tips and colouring sheets, to enable people to sit together, chat, and simply create.
Working out of her home studio/shed, Sarah is currently working on an arts and heritage project about the marshes and natural landscape of the North East Lincolshire coast, and is working on a book about nature noticing to encourage others to engage with and draw the natural world.
My
story
My sketchbook and art journey began in childhood, while on a boating holiday on the Norfolk Broads. I loved this holidays so much that I started to keep scrapbooks each time we went. I wanted to capture that feeling of being afloat, in nature on sparkling water. That was when I was 12. These occasional scrapbooks turned into books of to-do lists and diaries as I became a teenager, and in the years since were sometimes nothing more than lists of jobs to do as life and my journalism career took up more of my time. It was only when my son was little did my scrapbook/to-do notebooks morph into the art journals that I do now. Read more...
About the chalet
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When my chalet was first built in the 1930s it was called Homefield, and dates from the early decades of the Humberston Fitties.
When I bought the chalet I wasn't aware of its history, it was only when a friend found some plans online that I was able to start putting together the history of this place. The chalet plans unlock the key to the quirky layout, and are a great example of the hidden history that is contained within many properties on the Fitties.
My chalet is decorated with hand lettering and artwork inspired by this beautiful stretch of the Lincolnshire coast.
Details of how to rent the chalet are here.
Workshops
Part of my work is about delivering workshops to schools, holiday groups or teaching art journaling in the peaceful retreat of my chalet on the Humberston Fitties. If you're interesting in attending a workshop, or if you'd like me to come into your school then please email me at colouroutside.thelines@outlook.com
CONTACT
254 Anthonys Bank Road, Humberston Fitties, Cleethorpes
07866019521