Ann Blockley SWA is a renowned watercolour and mixed-media artist with an individual style developed over a lifetime of professional painting. Her pictures are evocative, atmospheric and intuitive. Her longstanding passion has been for nature, inspired by the countryside and gardens close to her Cotswold studio. Ann has a worldwide reputation for her unique interpretations and has written many books on her painting methods and filmed several dvds covering a wide variety of subjects. In later years she has moved from flowers and animals to the landscape with its trees, hedgerows, birds, and wild-flower meadows.
In all her pictures, Ann uses painterly textures, marks and edge values, using watercolour in an expressive, magical style. She stretches the boundaries of the medium, sometimes working on different surfaces to create unconventional textured images and sometimes reconstructing her work into intricate collages.
Ann has established a reputation as an enthusiastic and inspiring teacher at workshops in the UK and abroad. Her work is exhibited in galleries throughout UK and beyond and she also arranges her own solo shows. She writes for the Artist magazine and other international magazines. She is a member of the Society of Women artists (SWA), who hold their annual exhibition at The Mall Galleries in London. She is also a member of The Arborealists, a diverse group of artists who value trees, forests and a connection with nature, exhibiting in venues and galleries around UK and France. Ann’s late father was the inspirational artist, John Blockley RI PPPS RWA.
Ann’s demonstration will be based on the projects described in her new book ‘Ann Blockley’s Watercolour Workshop’ published by Pavilion books on March 1 2018.
She will be creating a new interpretation of one of the pictures in the book using a combination of different water-based mediums to demonstrate ways of creating loose, expressive marks and textures with a range of unusual techniques.
Tickets on sale through the website on 30th March
(Benefactors & Friends priority booking opens March 16th)