Gill Rowe
I have painted for more than 30 years and my style is constantly developing. My landscape paintings have travelled a fascinating road from figurative watercolours painted on location to semiabstract and abstract work painted in the studio in oil, acrylic and mixed media. Some have been based on charcoal drawings, watercolour sketches or photographs of scenes that have particularly interested me. Others emerge, often in unpreditable ways, from the choice of palette, medium and first brush strokes on the canvas. These paintings draw on my own memory bank but no scene is site specific; the landscapes are where you, the viewer, with your unique reservoir of experience and memories perceive them to be.
Classical music is very important to me and music has inspired numerous purely abstract works. Here key, rhythm and melody will suggest both palette and style. The painting may pay homage to a piece of music but will often develop in unexpected ways.
I also love depicting the human form, and again my style has developed from classical to more contemporary. Portaiture and Still Life are both areas where the subject is the catalyst for exploring composition, palette and form.
My other creative outlet is writing and I have published eight books of metric rhyming verse. There are many parallels to be found between painting and writing poetry. This was the subject of a talk I gave at the Lansdowne Club a while back. My poems have been performed by actors at several poetry evenings and many have been set to music.
The titles are:
Pirouetting Hippos 2005
How do I Look? 2007
You're Telling Me 2010
Widening Horizons 2012
A Whiff of Rosemary 2016
Stalking the Crilbit 2018
Tales You Win 2020
What a Wag 2021
The last two published by the Book Guild:
©Gill Rowe 2021
