An Ekphrastic Study of Lakeland Landscapes
“ My head was bouncing off the ceiling with it, I wanted to get back down to earth, with realism and landscape in particularly”. It was Anne’s parents that first introduced her to Lakeland. Her paternal grandparents lived in Bispham, Blackpool and at around age 5 or 6, she remembers plodging in the Irish Sea and being drawn to a big black mountain to the north.
“ I asked my mother ‘Where is the mountain?’ and her mother replied, ‘It’s the Lake District'. I had a deep feeling that I should be on top of that mountain and not here on this beach”.
Her grandfather had a small library, in it she found the ‘Little Red Book’ , Ward Lock & Co’s The English Lake District . Inside were fold out maps with contours in browny orange and lakes and tarns in light blue. Anne poured over these and marvelled at the mysterious place names, Hardknott Pass, Sprinkling Tarn, Eagle Crag, Great Gable and Catchedicam. During the Summer they also visited Anne’s Godmother who lived at Grasmere and the highlight of the year was visiting The Lake Artists Society exhibition which was held in Grasmere Village Hall.
At around this time, age 11, Anne discovered the A. Wainwright in Ambleside book shop and this started off an obsession of map reading and planning imaginative walks many based on his illustrated books. A. W. as he was known, became a hero of Anne’s youth.
During childhood Anne developed her interest in Natural History painting and studied for a B-Tec HND in Illustration (Sunderland 1988). This then developed more broadly into landscape painting and from around 30 years ago Anne sold her watercolours of the Lakes in Cumbria as well as ones of the Dales in Teesdale and surrounding areas.
After marriage and having two boys Anne felt a need to return to education qualifying as an art tutor (post 16) and then an MA in Fine Art and Education (Northumbria 2008). Following her MA where Anne discovered something new in large scale colourful abstraction (based on bird calls )she returned to landscape painting. Although enjoyable, she felt like abstraction was too intellectual for her,
Over the years with the benefit of travel Anne picked up many influences. Locally she is a great fan of the Cumbrian Painter Sheila Fell as well as the colourful expressionists and the ‘big’ ones, Cezanne and Van Gogh. “ I felt quite a personal connection with Sheila, there being a generation gap between myself and my parents, I was brought up with 1950’s people all around me, my father was also a coal miner and my mother an accomplished seamstress, making a lot of my childhood clothes to try and save money”
“This is my first solo show at Northern Lights Gallery and I am delighted to have been offered this opportunity.”
