My exhibition will be spread over several rooms in our lovely old cottage, so there is plenty of room to wander about at your leisure. This year, in addition to the usual framed paintings, there will be many unframed works at reduced prices, as well as a big selection of very inexpensive cards. Our big established garden is also a beautiful place to linger - for the last time, in fact. We will be “downsizing “ later this year, and leaving this much-loved place for a smaller home in the village. So I don’t know when or where my next exhibition will be!
My art career has developed over many years from a series of happy accidents. Without any formal training, I worked for 20 years as a freelance botanical illustrator, preparing pen and ink drawings for botanical textbooks. Then, about 40 years ago (!), I began to paint - in watercolour, as I have always liked the translucency of this medium. And my love of plants naturally led me to choose these as my favourite subjects, as well as local landscapes - with lots of plants in them!
I am endlessly fascinated by the beauty and incredible diversity of plant forms, and I try to express this wonder in my paintings by varying my style and technique, according to how I feel about each particular subject. Georgia O’Keeffe, an artist whose work I admire greatly, once wrote “When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else”. That says it all!
Over the years, I have had numerous exhibitions in the Oxford area (many of them in conjunction with ArtWeeks), as well as several in Geneva. In 2000 I was invited to become a Fellow of the Society of Botanical Artists (SBA), and I participate regularly in their London exhibitions. Then in 2005 I had my first solo exhibition in the prestigious Gerald Peters Gallery in Santa Fe, USA, and since then I have continued to exhibit my work there on a regular basis.