I come from a family of keen amateur painters and craftsmen. My mother studied at the Grimsby School of Art in the 1940s while my father – now in his nineties – discovered his skills in watercolour painting when he retired. Stonemasons also ran in the family, who were mainly based in and around Caistor where many of my ancestors lived and worked.
I have very happy memories of my mother teaching me some of the classic drawing techniques she had learned at college and her figurative and architectural drawings were exquisite. I still have them and often refer to them to keep these drawing practices alive.
I am also Lincolnshire born and bred, raised and educated in Lincoln before I started a long career in journalism at the Lincolnshire Echo, first as a cub reporter, then as news editor of the Lincoln Chronicle, before I headed north to Yorkshire. However, family roots in Lincolnshire remain as strong as ever and since I started painting 15 years ago I have found myself drawn time and again to the vast, open skies, rolling Lincolnshire Wolds and historic buildings of Lincoln for inspiration.
I continued to write as a freelance for national and regional magazines while developing artistic practices from a small studio at home, before making the switch to painting full time.
My passion for knife work developed as a result of wanting to work loosely and more spontaneously on larger scale paintings, inspired by the UK’s diverse and dramatic landscapes.
I work constantly to develop a distinctive and intuitive style by applying many layers of acrylics to capture the countryside’s ever-changing moods and atmosphere. I am always searching for, and experimenting with, ways to be more expressive and dynamic in my work, mixing my own colours and using a wide range of knives to push beyond my comfort zone. The aim is always to engage the viewer with a different perspective of our landscapes and never to become complacent – many pieces are discarded or reworked as the learning process continues on a daily basis.
I enjoy working plein air, but also take many reference photographs while riding pillion on our motor bike, or during travels in our small campervan with a bicycle on the back. We take the less travelled roads throughout the UK and Europe, in all weather conditions, to study the impact that light and changing seasons have on our landscapes, using these brief moments in time as reference points in my work.
The paring down of complex shapes and light in the heart of this summer-heavy forest helped me to find order in the chaos of trees and to structure a landscape developed through many layers of acrylics, applied entirely with knives. The avoidance of pre-drawing helped to develop a painting created entirely through loose strokes and instinctive structuring.
My work can be found in galleries and exhibitions across the north and I run workshops in palette knife painting for art groups and societies across the north of England and Scotland. Further examples of my paintings – which include figurative and still life – can be found on my website www.heatherburtonartist.co.uk and Instagram page @heatherburtonartist
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