PAINTING SHADOWS ,
A LIFE IN WATERCOLOUR
EARLY LIFE
I have spent my life in some very beautiful places. A childhood in exotic and colourful East Africa ( thats me on the reef at Mombasa) was followed by a time living on Tresco in the Isles of Scilly and Penzance and Newlyn in Cornwall. Now I find myself happily settled in West Somerset on the shores of the Bristol Channel.
My father, a passionate botanist and horticulturalist imbued me with a love of the natural world and also taught me the basic techniques of botanical watercolour painting. My mother, equally passionate about art,colour and design encouraged me to make it my career
At school I loved learning botany, biology, geography, geometry….anything where drawing was required and of course art lessons too. So I progressed naturally from school to Art College, pursuing my love of pattern-making and colour by studying textile design at Central School of Art in London. After graduating I worked designing printed textiles and wallpaper, mainly for the American market, with a wonderful, inspirational agent and mentor the late Brigitte Dehnert of Chelsea Textile Designs.
TEXTILE DESIGN
I don’t have many samples or pictures of the textile and wallpaper designs I created back then
But here is one of my printed linen furnishing designs. This one is based on Japanese woodblock prints.
I gave up designing for a while to raise a family and then, from the early eighties, I spent many happy years producing illustrations and designs for a local kitchenware company called Wilscombe Melamine
This was a design called ‘William and Morris’ and was used on trays, placemats, chopping boards etc. It was fun designing for Wilscombe in the days when melamine chopping boards and trays were very popular everywhere. We covered most of the familiar design themes from boards shaped like fruit and vegetables to Victorian style shop interiors and farmyard scenes , and of course lots of cats …
BOTANICAL PAINTING
During this time I also continued to paint flowers and plants in a botanical style.
In 1988, encouraged by my father I exhibited a series of paintings of magnolias in the RHS Spring Show in Vincent Square, for which I was awarded a Silver Gilt medal I also joined the Society of Botanical Artists and had small local exhibitions, including participating in Somerset Arts Weeks, and gradually expanded my style to include the still life compositions that are now my main inspiration
WHY STILL LIFE ?
As a myopic painter my near vision has always been very good. Landscapes are a blur but the close, intimate theatre of the still life genre and its assembled subjects and objects is a world I can joyfully inhabit. As an obsessive collector of old china and interesting junk, as well as keen gardener and enthusiastic cook I am never stuck for inspiration.
I am happy to find myself engaged with a genre that has an unbroken history in the art world. From Roman Mosaics through to Medieval Herbals, the sumptuous still lives of 17th century Spain and The Netherlands to the many inspiring 20th century and contemporary painters there has always been someone joyously portraying artichokes,asparagus, medlars, and old blue and white bowls .
Departures into the imagination
Sometimes I find whimsical or zoomorphic character in my subjects and give them leave to fly, converse, interact or otherwise take on an imaginary life.
Current Practice and Upcoming Events
For the last 20 years or so I have focused mainly on my painting…producing watercolours on a wide range of still life subjects , many of which are also available as giclee reproductions. My work is available in some local galleries and I also host solo shows in my house here in Watchet in West Somerset during Somerest Arts Weeks and near Christmas. This year Somerset Arts Weeks is an Open Studio event from 18th September to 3rd October . Most recently I have been working alongside a group of nine artists producing paintings as part of Somerset Wildlife Trust’s ‘Brilliant Coast ‘ project to be shown in an exhibition called ‘Shift’ at the new Contains Art Gallery in The East Quay Development and Art Centre in Watchet .
See my BLOG POSTS for further and up to date information about these events and how they will be organised with regard to covid restrictions at the time.
At present I also have some work at three West Country galleries
The Lynda Cotton Gallery in Watchet
The Lantic Gallery in Tiverton