In a project that playfully speaks to civic pride and military aesthetics, Beth J Ross is working with a local group to explore women’s contributions to the history and present of Berwick.

Over ten weekly creative sessions the group have been exploring women from the history of Berwick and the surrounding area, as well as discussing their own memories and experiences.

The group have learned about geometric abstraction with Ross, and have visited the Berwick Record Office and The King’s Own Scottish Borderers collection on site at Berwick Barracks.

This creative research will be used to design a series of new flags that will fly on flagpoles across Berwick, Spittal and Tweedmouth in Autumn 2025.

Beth J. Ross’s work explores memory, emotion, and place, capturing traces left by the environments she and others inhabit. Working with paint, drawing, light, photography, installation, and soft sculpture, she seeks to convey fleeting memories that resurface over time. Sometimes deeply personal, other times tied to echoes of the past in certain places, her work intuitively responds to these ‘ghosts’ that linger in our imaginations, our homes, and our cities. 

Born in Liverpool, Beth J. Ross is now based in North Shields. After a career teaching across the UK, Europe, the Middle East, and the Far East, she pursued fine art in her forties. Her public commissions include works for Lumiere Durham, Refocus Stockton, and North of Tyne. From 2023 to 2024, she was joint artist-in-residence at Cresswell Pele Tower and Gardens. Her work has been exhibited widely in the UK and internationally.