Tonight was a slightly different, but very special hut, from our usual ones. The letter was J and for us that stood for Jan. Janette Tozer was one of the first people to sign up to be an artist in the Beach Hut Advent Calendar, I still remember the first time we ever met in the front room of our house in Hove as we laid out the idea to a motley group of interested folk and Janette got the concept straight away.
Since that meeting in the middle of 2008, Janette has done a hut every year, even last year when it was howling a gale and she was not feeling very well. A few weeks after she spent the that evening sat in the car sheltering from the rain she was diagnosed with cancer and she succumbed to this quite quickly and died in July of this year.
Her husband Robin, together with his brother, wanted to do a hut this year as a tribute to her and they created something very different to the kind of hut that Janette would have done herself. This was a homage to her and the centrepiece was a lifesize image of Jan from her teenage years, posing on a heavenly backdrop in the way that Robin imagines her looking down on us in spirit.
Jan said that she discovered God through her art and many of her images were religious in nature, she especially loved painting images of Mary and we show some of her images here.
Our thoughts are with Robin as he learns to live his life without Jan and we remember Jan and her exploration of the divine through her art.
The next hut is number 44 featuring local artist Simon Vincent.
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