Welcome to the Hermitage...

Far away & long ago, there was a place that is also close by and right now. To get there you must step around the corner of everything that you hold to be real, and yield to an odd world which will take you in hand and tell you stories so strange and beautiful that you will be sorry to leave. Welcome to The Hermitage... A little cottage in the forest, a stopping place on your journey. Please come inside, stay awhile and wander through rooms of curiosities...

Rima Staines is an illustrator who paints and draws the things she sees when exploring this fairytale realm ... where she spends most of her time. Although she was born a Londoner in the 20th century she has always had one foot in Early Medieval Europe. She doesn't really know what to do about this. Rima's curiosity leads her through the many worlds of words, languages and lettering, books and stories, puppetry, nature and interesting people, music, superstitions, folklore and fairytales, and most of all the otherness that can be found on the periphery of our lives, the strange and grotesque, the absurd and unnerving ... that topsy turvy in between place where things are not quite what they seem...

Rima paints and draws on wood and paper. She enjoys entwining script and image closely and loves to write rhyming stories to tell her characters' tales using forgotten words and other languages. She also makes Things from Wood and has been initiated into the mysteries of Binding Books.

For inspiration she surrounds herself with images of skeleton leaves, medieval manuscript pages, ancient faces, Russian icons, old toys, bells & gypsy caravans, huts in the snow, jars & boxes, old violins, rusty keys & children's rhymes... And most dear of all things The Music – which inspires Rima more than anything...

Follow your feet & imaginations into this wonderful other world...

Or step aboard the Hermitage caravan & hear Rima's latest tales...

Or open the creaky door into the Hermitage emporium...

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