Wendy McBride

I was born on a small island off the coast of North Wales where my early encounters were with wild places; I remember tall grass and light that changed unceasingly across water and land.

Maybe what I want to express in my painting began in this childhood, not as an idyll, more an attempt to recover something of that pungency, the shock of first time things, from their displacement in adulthood. Whatever the reason, the natural world in its increasingly rare and fragile state, is still in many ways, central to my work.

J. M. W. Turner is an ongoing inspiration, especially his later perfectly unfinished sketches which might have been done yesterday, and also the Scottish Artist Joan Eardley, she who painted on the cliffs in all weathers, holding down her canvas with stones.

Most years I am invited to paint on Tresco in the Scillies and provide work for the gallery there each summer. My paintings can also be seen at White Space Gallery in Totnes, The Byard Gallery in Cambridge and Artmill Gallery in Plymouth.

I am an elected member of the Twenty One Group of Artists, The Plymouth Society of Artists, an associate member of Penwith Gallery in St Ives, and also for many years, I was a member of the South West Academy of Artists which is now based in Sidmouth in Devon.