Born in 1955 in south Somerset, I have been involved with art circles since the age of 17, when joining my first painting classes. Starting with oils and belonging to a class dealing almost entirely with the local Somerset landscape, I gradually extended my interests to produce work in pastels, acrylics, gouache, coloured pencil and acrylic inks. During a spell in the mid-90's of severe back problems, I began using subject material close to home....the garden. This led on to a steady run of some four years painting floral subjects almost exclusively.
In 1999 I joined a growing number of painters who were putting up personal websites showing their pictures. This eventually led on to the creation of my dot.com website in 2001 and the addition of this co.uk website in 2009. A third site, www.abstractswork.co.uk, also exists as a separate "identity", for experimenting and play.
My annual production is shared between a few offline group exhibitions, several selected online galleries and this website.
Style of Work
My general style, since the late 90's has varied between traditional and more modern images. I also started working on larger canvas panels and exploring the use of acrylic. Flowers offer a wide variety of shape, colour and composition, allowing the creation of bold images for Internet sale and other, representational pictures for local exhibitions. More recent work has focused on garden scenes, mainly those vistas and hidden corners found on large estates. Changes, however, have been gradually taking place. Last year (2008) quite a lot of pastel work was done (although not all of it has gone online); some experimental work with acrylic and texture; a few larger landscapes in oils; while some imagination-work and abstract ideas have formed the backbone of a separate website. These allow me to break away from the floral "pigeonhole" and explore totally different ideas.2009 has seen more acrylic work, a move away from smaller canvases and a further exploration of texture effects. My aim to include a few more landscapes has been somewhat thwarted by the statistics of the website that show visitors selecting floral scenes much more readily. The year has also seen several breaks between me and my usual painting "socials"...for example, for the first time in twenty-seven years, I have not exhibited any work with local groups. This has all been mainly to do with family changes and extra demands on my time, but that is the way things go sometimes. Internet buyers have been much more in evidence and they seem to prefer the modern styles, therefore my time has tended to be geared towards that kind of work.
My former working background is in scientific, technical and analytical laboratory work. I prefer, though, not to do exacting botanical painting. I do not generally follow trends, fads or topics-of-the-moment, working only on subject matter that I can relate and respond to in a personal way.
- 1974... Started art classes, first pictures exhibited and sold the following year;
- 1979... Shared local exhibition with three artists;
- 1980... First successful entries to Royal Bath and West Art Show;
- 1980 onwards... Support of various local exhibitions involved in charity fundraising;
- 1996... Start of flower painting, production and sale of first floral pictures;
- 1999... First website created at Cottagegallery;
- 2000 onwards...creation of second website; reintroduction of more landscape pictures;
- 2001 to 2004...Three Local Best In Show Awards; one for a still-life and two for landscapes; all pastel paintings. (However, I don't make a habit of entering art competitions).
- 2005... Continued establishment of artwork sales online and commission-work. First sales made to buyers in U.S.A
- 2006... Participation in Chicago-based exhibition, with a group of artists; displaying mainly small works no larger than 4 x 3 inches approximately. Further commissions for private buyers, single and multiple-panel florals; further sales made to overseas buyers.
- 2007.....A quieter year, heavily interrupted by family and household needs in the second half. However, a couple of commissions successfully completed during this time. The painting "Calla Curves" appeared as a support image in the book "The Acrylic Flower Painters' A to Z" by Lexi Sundell (Quarto Press).
- 2008....Ongoing, but including membership of several new online galleries.
- 2009....Introduction of the co.uk domain in mid-year, mainly to mirror the dot com domain and act as back-up.
- 2010....Plans to merge dot com with co.uk towards end of the year, but there may be a few technical difficulties and I may yet retain both for a further year. Threats from governments to control the Internet reinforce my concerns over keeping up 'Net visibility. On the painting front, despite the recession, I am pleased to be actually selling more work than in 2009.
General History:
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