ANTHEA SIMMONS (UK)

Anthea lives in her woods in East Devon, an ex-City escapee and Oxford English graduate, fairly solitary, in love with the landscape.

In her work, she tries to capture the latent energy in the land; the lurch of the hills; the eruptions of colour; the shapes and textures of fields, hedges, woods. She works fast, making big, gestural marks and keeps returning to canvasses, building up the paint, adding texture, moulding and carving. Recent work includes a number of large paintings depicting earthworks in the West Country – the China Clay Pits at St Austell, where she rode as a child; Dunkery Beacon; the Nine Maidens at Boscawen. She is drawn by the shapes and by their other-worldliness when viewed from above. The newest work, and the start of a large collection known as The Dryads, focuses on the secret life of trees: striking compositions in strong colours, the paint thickly encrusted and gouged, creating a strong impression of drama and mystery.

She wants the viewer to be drawn in to the landscape, to see it afresh, to acknowledge its energy and power and to be filled with the urge to feel it beneath their feet. She tries to deliver intensity through scale, colour and texture, maintaining a sense of the energy which is invested in the work and the passion which is felt for its source.