Having spent most of her life involved in healing, yoga and meditation, both practising and teaching, alongside her art, it was inevitable that they would eventually combine into something deeper.
So many outside influences - archaeology, light, atmosphere, birds, patterns - but this was not enough, there was more!
North, South, East, West, she has travelled all over the world with her husband and family for business and pleasure, visiting so many incredible places and being privileged to meet many amazing people who shared such delights with them.
Hi, I am Annette,
A mixed media contemporary fine art painter/printmaker based in Northamptonshire, UK.
She has found that our inner journeys which are the most potent, the most difficult to share, are yet the most joyous.
So began her odyssey to bring something of that spark, that burst of life, of creation into her work. There is such joy in the spontaneity and complexity of pattern and colour, delving into her own psyche and finding pleasure.
TOTALLY SPONTANEOUS CREATIVITY! This is what you will find in her paintings. She still uses her yoga mat, but her brush and palette come first!
She keeps a studio in Raunds, Northants, where she lives with her husband and black Labrador, Dexter. She can be found here on most days unless she is lucky enough to get to the coast.
For fun, she Open Water Swims in any water she can access - although she has a passion and need for the sea - and together they walk the woods and fields nearby and on their sons’ farms, watching the wildlife and discovering ‘Explosions of Creation’ in all seasons of the year.
Are you sitting comfortably?
Let me tell you the story behind my why.
WHY I MAKE THE ART I MAKE. Once upon a time, there was a little girl who truly believed she was a Starchild, born somewhere out in the Universe, but living here on Earth by mistake. My name is Annette and I never did feel as though I belonged; I was different, I lived in a world full of colours which others couldn’t see. Think of the Northern Lights; but everywhere, in so many colours, a world full of ethereal ribbons of colour and energy streaming from everything which surrounded me.
I so wanted to be back among the stars and I was sure that if I ran and jumped high enough I would be able to get back to my own world. Believe me, I tried!
I was quite a solitary child as Mum and Dad didn’t let me have children around to play, so mostly my friends were the birds in the bushes - which I drew and painted; and the fairies which stayed with me and protected me at night.
Well, even Starchildren grow up and eventually, I folded the colours and visions away and tucked them into a corner of my heart; but I have always walked my life with one foot in each world. Seeing wonders that I have shared with only a precious few for fear of being ridiculed as being full of fights of fancy; however, working as a healer for many years I did meet many who were open and accepting of me.
Then, one day something happened - my two worlds collided in a totally unforeseen way.
I was on a scuba diving trip in the Bahamas; I and my buddy, Gus, were descending a sheer cliff beneath the ocean as far as we could safely go. As I tucked my heels into a ledge on the rock - some wit had put a ‘No Parking’ sign there! - I looked out and my heart almost choked full of awe, wonder and joy.
It was as if the whole universe was here on earth.
ABOVE NOTHING, BELOW NOTHING; in front of me, blue as far as the eye could see, just nothing, and yet that nothing was full of everything that creates and grows. But all too quickly it was time to go, so I folded the memories up and tucked them away in a corner of my heart.
Fast forward several years, full of family, love, travel, yoga, healing and of course painting, it skipped by.
Then one day a group of friends visited my studio and as they looked at my skilful, perfect work I could see that they were underwhelmed.
After they had gone, I sat and looked around, closed my eyes and all of a sudden I was back, back in the water on that undersea ledge and I knew that this was what I had been missing.
That joy, that unexplainable urge of creation, out of nothing, and now I am bringing you, I hope, a taste of how that felt, the enormity of how that has impacted upon my life without my realising it over the years.
Now as I pick up my brush, I paint from those potent inner journeys to share with you that joy, that wonder, those colours and something of the enormity of the experiences of my life.
I can only imagine what the world would be like if everybody could see in the way that I and many others do.
It would be wonderful wouldn’t it?
A SELECTION OF EXHIBITIONS
Bankside Gallery, London, 2023
Lamport Hall mixed show 2022
ARTMO, permanent online exhibition
M.A.D.S Art Gallery Milan, 2021
Rheged Gallery, Cumbria 2021
The Holy Art, London 2021
Contemporary Art Station, London, 2021
Ropewalk Gallery, Humberside, 2020
Rossocinabro Gallery, Rome, 2019
Cambridge Original Printmakers Biennale, 2016
FPS Open, Fitzrovia Gallery, London
50 Years of Artists Prints, Bankside Gallery, London 2015
Solo show, JGallery, Moulton, 2014
Cork Street Open, London, twice, 2012, 2013
SWLA, The Mall, 2009, 2012
COLLECTIONS
Victoria & Albert Museum, London
Scarborough Museum
Private collections in England, Scotland, Orkney, Canada, South Africa, USA, Japan, Thailand and Panama
PUBLICATIONS
House & Garden, 2022
World of Interior Design, 2022
Chelsea Life 2022, St Johns’ Wood Life, Notting Hill Life 2022
Conde Nast Magazine 2021
Norfolk Gems
50 Years of Artists Prints
International Contemporary Artists - Vol XI
Art of Poetry by Obsidian Gallery, two volumes.
And many more.
My work can be seen at Primrose Gallery www.primrosegallery.co.uk and at The Artful Duck Gallery, Raunds, 07552 767154