Tess spent her childhood in a landlocked inner city environment but lived for her school holiday escapes to Ireland and family farms where she was free to roam, hiking and drawing from an early age. A love of art and nature became a clear path to enrolling at Bournville School of Art and then studying for a BA (Hons) in the rolling countryside of Bath Academy.
She went on to complete Masters in Fine Art and a postgraduate in Art History, combining her practice with lecturing in colleges in the Midlands and on the South Coast. For a few years, research projects on combining drawing and computational creativity led to a postgraduate in computing, but a sudden change in life led her back to the classical tradition. Tess lives and works as a full time painter with a studio next to the sea in Brighton.
Landscapes have been central to Tess’s work for more than twenty years and an active life that includes weekly pilot gig rowing, summer sailing and hiking which provide many moments of inspiration for her work.
Growing up in a large city but having the privilege of escaping to Ireland and experiencing a freedom to explore the landscape felt miraculous a child and it still does today. Somehow, my painting and love of the landscape are intertwined. As I put one foot in front of another or listen to the rhythm of a boat, all my senses are alert to the rhythms, the shifting light and colours that surround me. I often call my plein air work, the wild painting, as the elements, the light conditions and visceral mark making all inform the inception of the final, studio paintings.
The studio practice encompasses the interplay of the impressions captured en-plein air with the role of memory and the intrinsic qualities of the landscape. The work is about more than depicting a place, it is about how it makes you feel.
The luminosity of oil paint and the visual play that layers of glazed, subtle hues can create, adds a depth and richness to the studio work which takes time and patience as I work between paintings. The tradition of exploring the world, drawing and painting on route, is one that I share with artists through history, including some of my favourite painters in the Hudson River School and with the more familiar J.M.W.Turner.