Artist's Statement I am an Artist Painter although it was many years before I realised it was what I really wanted to be. The journey took me from a childhood interest in drawing, two years in the Junior Art Dept. at Nottingham Art College, my first paid work in a textile design room at Viyella where I was a general dogs body !! Then, at 18, I decided my mission in life was to be a nurse, all very noble, and romantic, but very hard work. At 28 I married an engineer and my journey took me to many strange and exotic places. We spent a year living in the far north of British Columbia, in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. We then returned to England, me pregnant with our son and my husband with a yen for warmer climes. So we took our four month old son to Saudi Arabia and for the next twelve years travelled extensively in and around the Arabian Peninsula with annual treks back to England, taking a different route through Europe each year, also taking every opportunity for short breaks in exotic places. Perks of the job. In those years, when not working or socialising, I was always busy with ‘arty stuff’. I painted murals on the walls of our villa, I quilted and patchworked, knitted and sewed clothes with exotic fabrics and took lots of photographs of our travels. Then we returned to UK to live permanently. I did a Return to Study course for mature students. One of my subjects was A level art. Around the same time we came to live in this house in the Valley of the Don. I was completely bowled over by the local scenery. I realised that the journey from childhood to here through all the wonderful places I had seen with all the varied scenery - mountains, deserts ,wild coasts - was a preparation for what I was always meant to do. Here I was in this beautiful wooded valley with river and falls, steep-sided cliffs, wildlife, still water, running water, stormy water and all the colours of all this changing with the seasons. I just knew I had to paint it, paint it all, all the seasons, all the colours, the moods, the weather. I taught myself to paint, I joined local art groups, I watched and listened and saw what other artists did, some things I took on board a lot I didn’t. I started to show my work with varying degrees of success and my paintings started to sell. Sheila M Bury 7 July 2011. email - dobiedays@blueyonder.co.uk blog - sprotbropainter.blogspot.com |
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