Press Release
29 | 04 | 24
Available throughout July
Thorp Perrow Arboretum Sketch Collection
Acers and Blue Firs, Winter| Oil on paper | Rebecca Styles
From January to December 2024, British landscape painter Rebecca Styles is Artist in Residence at Thorp Perrow Arboretum, where she is creating a collection of paintings for exhibition in 2025. To mark the midpoint of her year in residence, throughout July Rebecca is presenting a preview collection of oil sketches, all created ‘en plein air' at the arboretum throughout the spring and early summer.
For art lovers and fans of Thorp Perrow's beautiful landscape, the preview collection of twenty works offers buyers the chance to acquire developmental sketches ahead of the major painting exhibition, which is scheduled to be on show at Harrogate's 108 Fine Art next year.
Thorp Perrow's 100 acres of parkland showcases a spectacular variety of trees, including five National Plant Collections, and Rebecca's artworks respond to the seasons as they change from spring and summer through to autumn and winter.Landscape is at the heart of Rebecca's practice, and all her collections stem from extended projects related to unique locations. Using natural materials, she explores a deeper connection to ‘place' in her work with an emphasis on creating landscapewithlandscape - using local earth pigments, grit, charcoal and other found materials to create her oil paints.
Rebecca is a recipient of a Visual Artist and Craft Makers Award and a Creative Scotland Artist Bursary for her work involving raw pigments and traditional paint making. She was recently shortlisted for the Andrew Stewart Award.
The Rebecca Styles Thorp Perrow Sketch Collection will be available from 1stto 31stJuly 2024 atwww.rebeccastyles.co.ukand @rebeccastylesart
Rebecca is currently the first Artist in Residence at Thorp Perrow Arboretum, Bedale, North Yorkshire, DL8 2PS.Seewww.thorpperrow.comthroughout 2024 for further information on Rebecca's exhibitionsand follow the project on Rebecca's blog atrebeccastyles.co.uk.
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Print Ready 300dpi images for press use:
REBECCA STYLES Acers and Blue Firs, Winter
Editors Notes
ABOUT REBECCA STYLES
Rebecca Styles was born in West Yorkshire. She studied at Bradford College of Art, and later Somerset College of Art &Technology and Falmouth College of Art. She has spent several years travelling and painting the landscape in some of the UKs most beautiful locations, including the Isles of Scilly, West Cornwall, Devon, and then, on her narrowboat ‘Puck', the beautiful rural counties of Gloucestershire and Derbyshire.For the past five years she has worked from her studio in the Outer Hebrides on the West Coast of Scotland, and recently relocated to focus on the landscapes of Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and the eastcoast of England.
PROJECTS & EXHIBITIONS
Rebecca has spent recent years exploring some of the UK's most beautiful locations, collecting foraged materials for use in her paintings and creating a series of works for exhibition, including her first Hebridean collection,Bigger Than Us, shown at Grinneabhat Gallery, North Bragar in spring 2022, followed byAlchemy,an exhibition of paint, poetry and place in collaboration with writer Heather Young, shown at Baile na Cille Church on the Isle of Lewis, and her winter 2022/23 projectFinding Lewisat Talla Na Mara Arts Centre on the Isle of Harris.
Throughout 2023, Rebecca focused on developing her work through a series of plans and residencies based on engaging with new and diverse landscapes. She took up a two-week residency at Brisons Veor, Cornwall, where she explored, in contrast to Scotland's Western Isles, the softer but still wild landscape of Britain's South West edge. The resulting collection was exhibited as her very first solo show, at Whitewater Contemporary in Polzeath, Cornwall. In November she undertook a three-week residency at Casa Tagumerche in La Gomera, Canary Islands, at a community art venue 400 meters above sea level with magnificent, unobstructed views of the Atlantic Ocean. This new project at Thorp Perrow Arboretumwill run from January to December 2024 and is kindly supported by Wallace Seymour Fine Art of Settle, who are supplying Rebecca with a selection of their unique earth pigments, all sourced in the county of Yorkshire.
For further press information or additional images contact Mercedes Smith at Fine Art Communications director@fineartcommunications.co.uk | www.fineartcommunications.co.uk
