Swan Pond Views in Three Seasons
By Angie Spencer
Original artworks
Oil on board
Framed
Image size: H: 40cm x W: 20cm
Framed size: H: 44cm x W: 22cm
£375 each
In order as above:
Red House from the Swan Pond
Snowdrops by the Swan Pond
Exedra from the Swan Pond
As a dedicated plein air painter, Angie is to be found outside, in all weathers, capturing the water and woodlands near her Stroud home.
For the last year, however, she has also been 'Artist in Residence' at Painswick Rococo Garden, creating these wonderful records of the unique charms of this very individual British pleasure garden at all times of the year. If you've visited the Rococo Garden in the past 12 months you may have come across her at work, with her old-style travel easel and oil paints.
Across the seasons, she chose views from quiet corners - like this trio - with a particular fondness for its water features, her favourite subject. So, here we have three vertical slices of the garden viewed from the Swan Pond, with the water and its ripples, reflections and vegetation in the foreground.
Though home to various ducks, the Swan Pond is so named not because it is home to swans but because an early sketch of the garden showed a central sculpture, or fountain, in the pond in the shape of a boy riding on a swan's back. It's the perfect spot for distant views of so many of the garden's best-known features.
Overall, the result of Angie's residency is an unmissable, once-only collection of works, perfect for anyone who loves - or lives in - this part of the country or is a devotee of the Rococo style.
“Painting in the Rococo Garden has been a delight. Staff and volunteers have been so welcoming and the Garden itself is a painter’s paradise, full of serene beauty,” says Angie. “My residency has also presented a few challenges – mainly that of painting in public. I got used to engaging with visitors at every stage of a painting’s development, from the first brush strokes. Being met with such resoundingly positive responses has been wonderful.”
ABOUT ANGIE SPENCER
Angie was born in Scarborough, North Yorkshire in 1959 and now lives in Stroud where she has her studio.
Her paintings explore the beauty of the landscape. She has a particular love of - and expertise in - painting the moving waters of rivers and lakes where she swims regularly throughout the year.
She works mostly in oils ‘en plein air’ and draws inspiration from the Romantic movement and their approach to the landscape. If work is developed in the studio it always begins with plein air drawings rather than with photographs.
“I find that there is no substitute for direct observation. I paint best when I'm immersed in the landscape. There are colours and subtleties in nature that are difficult to imagine in the studio. The direct effects of light and atmosphere can only ever be hinted at in a painting but there is a greater chance of capturing it if one is observing carefully from life.”
Angie graduated with a BA in Fine Art at the University of Gloucestershire in 2004. She is also a classical violinist and, currently, is leader of the Stroud Symphony Orchestra, as well as playing in the Capriol Chamber Orchestra and in a string quartet.