We are delighted to open Three Generations, an exhibition by Jess Levine, bringing together her work alongside that of her mother and grandmother. To exhibit three generations within a single lineage is to ask what it means for creativity to be shaped at the kitchen table as much as in the studio. What passes between grandmother, mother, and daughter may be technique, sensitivity to material, or thematic preoccupation—but it may also be something less visible: a permission to make, a model of artistic life, a way of seeing the world. In this sense, inheritance becomes both conscious and atmospheric.
Three Generations invites reflection on the nature of artistic inheritance—how it is carried, contested, and reimagined. The exhibition emerges as a living archive: a testament to legacy understood not as fixed inheritance, but as dynamic and unfinished.
Maria Seviers – (1911 – 1994)
Old Hampstead pottery, became Seviers Pottery based in Perrins Lane in Hampstead, North London. Maria fled Nazi Germany and worked tirelessly to establish Seviers Pottery.
Maria was a great rival of the potter Lucie Rie, Maria adamant that she made more elegant handles!
After much work, Maria eventually became a supplier of earthenware for the shop Heals, and her work is most easily identified by the colour she called ducky egg blue, and the finger swirl design on bowls and saucers.
Julia Levine (1939 – 2025)
Julia in her words ‘made a career out of going to art school’. Her art education included studying at Byam Shaw, Hornsey school of art and the Royal college of art. Her tutors included Carel Weight and she was a contemporary of David Hockney.
Julia won a number of prestigious awards for her life drawing and life painting. She would often return to the landscape, capturing space, mood, and the sensory connection between people and their environments.
Julia produced an enormous volume of artwork over her lifetime – a small selection of which is here at The Farmers Arms. More work can be seen by request.
Please contact Jess Levine to make arrangements. Email –
1976jesszl@gmail.com or mobile – 07734 541892
Jess Levine
Having lived in Backbarrow for five years, my work has revisited aspects of collage process and creating abstracted spaces.
The making of collage feels a very direct connection to my Mum Julia who would often send little scraps of paper, cardboard and netting which she thought would inspire me.
I feel that in this exhibition of three generations there is a thread of the sensory nature of our work, the physical mark making, and vitality in the use of materials, is something that I hope resonates.
