About Richard and Judi
We are Richard and Judi Watkin. Rich is the artist and talent behind the whole operation and Judi is the driving force (aka slave driver) and spokesperson. We never intended to start a business at our time of life, we thought we would be following in our parents’ footsteps, retiring gracefully and taking it easy. But Rich has so much flippin’ talent it seemed criminal not to share his wonderful work.
Rich took early retirement from teaching and in 2014 took part in Dorset Art Weeks, every painting sold. Rich went back to the studio and painted more scenes of Dorset and we invested in a Canon printer and started to produce prints of all of Richards paintings. Judi built a website and set up social media pages and we rather nervously took part in our first event. We had no way of taking card payments and no idea if anyone would buy our prints, but they did and an original painting! We were also approached by our first retailer, the lovely Jason from Scape Interiors in Westbourne who still stocks our work.
We are always looking at ways to improve what we do, cut down on plastic and unnecessary packaging, making the website easy to use and offering good old-fashioned customer service. We try and support local business; our cards and books are printed in Dorset and lots of the events we attend are supporting local charities.
To date we work more hours and earn far less than we ever have done but we also have far more fun, we love what we do and can’t imagine ever fully retiring!!