A GROUP of artists and art lovers is celebrating turning 25 this year with its annual autumn exhibition.

Abingdon Artists began in 1990 after Pat Tayler, a teacher who has always loved drawing, decided to start an official gathering for artists in the town.

A quarter of a century later and the group is going strong as it holds its latest exhibition today from 10am to 5pm.

Its creation came after she registered to be featured in Oxfordshire Artweeks, a festival for creators across the county, and did not get as much visibility as she had hoped.

She said: “If you registered and appeared on their brochure, anybody getting it could come along and see the work you did.

“I thought: ‘Gosh, that sounds great, I’ll get my name in the brochure’. So I did this and got all my work on display and for two days not one person turned up. Nobody came. It was awful.”

That was in 1983. At the time, Mrs Tayler said there was no gallery for artists to show their work in the town and no art group.

She got in touch with other artists from Abingdon who met up in a coffee bar and discussed calling themselves Abingdon Artists.

For seven years, they published a local version of the Oxfordshire Artweeks brochure, featuring artists from Abingdon.

In 1990, they became the official club that still exists today and soon held their first exhibition.

Mrs Tayler, now 74, left Abingdon in 1993 to live in France but has since come back to England, residing in Frome, Somerset. She said the club has kept going and gone from strength to strength.

It now holds two exhibitions per year, one in autumn and one during the spring. It has painting sessions on Tuesday afternoons and drawing workshops on alternate Friday mornings.

Every month, an artist or an art historian comes to discuss and demonstrate techniques from figure-drawing to still life and knife painting.

The club’s artist of the month programme makes it possible for members to display and sell their works in three venues around Abingdon: Wells Farmshop Cafe at Peachcroft Farm; St Ethelwolds House at 30 East St Helen Street; and Rosie’s Tea Room in West St Helen Street.

Diana Matthews, a mother of three who used to manage Abingdon’s Oxfam shop and joined Abingdon Artists last year, said: “I’m probably one of the least experienced, but I really enjoy it.

“We all think: ‘I can’t paint and draw’ but it’s about practice.”

Caroline Harben, who has been involved with the club since she moved to Abingdon nine years ago and became the chairperson in February, said: “Painting is a very solitary occupation and one of the things that’s really nice about painting with other people is that, in a painting group, you have a bunch of people you can talk to.”

Abingdon Artist’s autumn exhibition is open from 10am to 5pm today at St Nicholas Church.