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British Women Artists 2009 Competition Winner

Pavement prairie planting, Holloway Road (Artwork Number: 1623)
Belle Robinson
Pavement prairie planting, Holloway Road
Belle was christened Isabelle but she has always been called Belle and as a teenager she was a part of a Whitechapel Art Gallery club for talented teenagers. Age 17 she applied to Hornsey Art College but, the 'stuff of life' took over and she got pregnant. Taken over with bringing up her own children and being a single mother for seven years, art was put on the back burner and she didn't really pick up the artistic thread again until she was 48 years old- that was 14 years ago! She is now 62 years old.

Encouraged by her artist friend Kurt Jackson who told her that; the first ten years are the worst, she has been working in her kitchen between doing a part time job ever since. Taking copious photographs of urban wild life and manipulating them on a computer to use for reference for her paintings.

She said that she is overawed and very encouraged about having won the prize as there were so many entries.

This painting is the second in a series that she is currently working on for a show next year, provisionally entitled 'London Cultivation'. Its theme is the gardens, allotments and public planting in and around inner London. Belle enjoys London's enormous range of cultivation and finds some of the inventiveness of public planting truly inspirational and illuminating the most dull and depressed areas. She says of her winning painting:-

To convey this meadow-like corner, I've mixed the paint with turpentine to a very runny consistency. And, by allowing each layer to dry before scattering, flicking and dropping on the next one, I've tried to 'grow' the painting in sympathy with its theme. This is a technique I have developed to express the random nature of growth itself, and is an exploration into paint texture and its relationship with the subject. This will be my second show at the Print House Gallery, the first can be seen by visiting

Information about the artist Belle Robinson

This is just what I wanted the 'British Women Artists' web site to achieve; exposure for an artist that may not move in the cliquey and snobbish over intellectual and often ageist art world. I think I am as delighted as Belle.

JoWonder

Judges
Tony Pontone
Managing Director Of Albemarle Gallery Located in London's West End, Mayfair, the Albemarle is considered to be one of the best small galleries in London. It has a tradition of supporting controversial artists from a diverse range of backgrounds and styles.
Edward Lucie Smith
British writer, poet, art critic, curator, broadcaster and author of numerous books including Sexuality in Western Art, Symbolist Art, Movements in Art Since 1945 and numerous others.
Amanda Rigler
Curator of The New Hall Collection, this unusual collection contains nearly 350 contemporary works by distinguished women including Maggi Hambling, Barbara Hepworth and Paula Rego.

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