I am mainly self- taught together with having undertaken many inspiring courses. I started painting seriously following an Intensive Foundation course at The Slade, UCL London in 1999 under Jo Volley, where I sold work and received great encouragement. Other commitments have meant an interrupted progress since, although I was fortunate to be chosen to exhibit an oil painting for an Annual Exhibition of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters in the Mall Galleries, London. With more time, and now living in Dorset UK, I am delighted to be drawing and painting professionally.
Recent Exhibitions
2014 Dorset Arts Weeks -Open Studio.
2014 The Lighthouse, Poole
2015 Dorchester Museum and Gallery (BAC).
2015 Old School Gallery, Yetminster.
2015 Durlston Castle, Swanage (BAC).
2016 Sherborne Abbey (SWA).
2016 Dorset Arts Week -Open Studio.
2018 Kingscombe Centre, Dorset. (BAC)
2018 Eype Centre for the Arts.
2018 Dorset Art Weeks -Open Studio.
2019 Durlston Castle Gallery, Swanage.
2019 Bishops Palace, Wells
2021 Shaftesbury Arts Centre (Solo)
Land and Seascapes. Instinctively drawn to places where there remains a taste of wildness, often with touches of humanisation. I am sensitive to ambience and works are often atmospheric, contemplative and poetic. I aim to communicate my experience of sense of place and appreciation of the inherent beauty in nature. The recording of form and sensation, by drawing, markmaking and pleinair painting are basic to my practice.
My still life oil paintings aim to capture structural and functional qualities of form using accurate observation and traditional oil painting techniques. I seek a minimilist approach using subtle warm and cool neutral colours where possible, and a work where the emphasis is on light, stillness and the aesthetic elegance of the subject.
The Floral series arose from the confinement of lockdowns which led me to search my garden and locality for new sources of inspiration – exciting discoveries – the rich colour of a briefly flowering peonie, pops of colour in a winter garden and the poetic, fragile beauty in imperfection; fragments of dry beech leaves, broken twigs and fading petals.
pearl gatehouse art 