Image: Wysing Arts Centre
Louise Ashcroft's 'Socks for Social Dreaming' is a series of watercolours on paper made out of the artist's 2025 residency at St Peter's School in Huntingdon, sold through Wysing Arts Centre. Wysing's own listing puts the edition at 55 works and dates the launch to 11 July 2026, as part of Wysing Open, rather than to the August newsletter that circulated it more widely.
The works are described by Wysing as an edition in which each sheet is one-of-a-kind, and they vary in size between 35 by 27 centimetres and 42 by 31 centimetres. Each costs 60 pounds, with a lower price for buyers under 22. Income from every painting is split equally three ways, between Ashcroft, Wysing and a charity chosen by St Peter's School.
The series came out of what the pupils did during the residency. Working in watercolour, they made an animated film proposing changes to their school building and its rules; one proposal was to customise uniforms in textile class, specifically the socks. Wysing says the project brought about real change at the school, but that plain socks remained non-negotiable policy.
Ashcroft took the sock as "a site of potential resistance" and painted people practising forms of freedom - dancing, tickling, being odd - while wearing elaborate socks. By the artist's own account the images were conjured from imagination in a flow state, some of them spooky and some ridiculous, and many of the paintings do not show socks at all.
Ashcroft is also Wysing's first Young People's Artist in Residence for 2026-27, a post held in partnership with the disability arts organisation DASH. Wysing Arts Centre is based at Fox Road in Cambridgeshire and supports artists through residencies, studios and public programmes.
