About Anni Grove
"Anything I can photograph, I can paint"
Anni paints people,
plants and animals in their environment, using
watercolour and media of various kinds.
After early experience
on W.I. painting weekends, Anni moved on to
the Art Foundation at Mander College,
Bedford, then to London to study painting,
drawing, photography, textile print and
printmaking at Wimbledon School of Art,
Morley College and North-East London
Polytech. She finally obtained a Diploma in
Art and Design as a mature student in 1986.
Influential tutors included Cecil Collins
and Maggi Hambling. More recently she has
brought her skills up to date by studying
typesetting, typography and computer design.
Her first degree was a
B.Sc. in Dairying at the University of
Reading. This early interest in food and
farming was followed by some years of travel
before being expanded to include gardening
and smallholding while her children were
young. More recently she has been exploring
markets and marketing, particularly of
organic food. She took the photographs for
the recent opening of the new Organic Food
Market at Spitalfields, London, and her
photographs were published in the "New
Farmer and Grower" and the Soil Association
magazines. |
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By
producing environmental images through photography
and painting, she is able to use both her scientific
and artistic training to combine it with green
philosophy worked out during the years of practical
food production for the family by the Bedford Ouse.
The result is work which is presented artistically
but informed by scientific understanding.
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Often Anni's models are her own
family and friends, and her subjects are their life
or work, where is coincides with her own interests
and artistic needs. Her interest in the Basingstoke
area arose because her daughter was working with
horses at a stud near Newnham Green. Anni has always
loved animals and has been familiar with them since
childhood, so she was only too happy to include them
in her work. Many of the pieces shown have their
origins in the Basingstoke area and now that Anni
lives within easy reach of the town she plans to do
a series of paintings including the farm buildings
at Old Basing House.
Photography is important in
Anni's work. She is an experienced photographer of
rural subjects, and now uses it as a means of
capturing fleeting information during visits to the
country, to be distilled into painting later in
town. She often works from her own photographs, and
welcomes the chance to take photographs of
livestock, landscapes, or buildings at studs or
farms. She has also done successful portraits by
this method
"Anything I can photograph, I
can paint" is her motto. |
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