Naomi Rae

Growing up in an artistic family in the thriving art colony of St Ives in Cornwall, drawing and
painting has always been a part of my life. Taught by my grandfather, father and uncle, my
earliest memories involve a sketchbook and pencil, canvas and palette knife, painting and
sketching along the cliffs of the West Penwith peninsula.
A move from Cornwall to the diverse and unfamiliar landscape of New Zealand in my late
twenties brought fresh inspiration and a new focus and on my return to St Ives a few years
later, I set up my studio and began painting full time.
My work from this period in Cornwall was purely abstract; acrylic on canvas applied impasto
style, creating vivid and highly textured pieces. Whilst a direct response to the landscape
around me, these paintings focused more on colour and form than a sense of place. A
decade later, a move to the rolling South Downs in West Sussex, saw a dramatic shift in my
work to smaller, figurative, monochromatic studies in Indian ink on paper; rooted in place
and dominated in subject matter by the huge skies of the South downs and the sweeping
estuaries that pepper the West Sussex coastline.
Having worked on the isle of Arran for a number of years, moving here permanently in
2020 saw another shift in my work. The pieces I am producing now see a melding of my
early abstract work and my more recent figurative work. I am still working in Indian ink
but on board rather than paper, allowing me to use a combination of techniques I
wouldn't able to use on paper, such as scragfito. The ink is built up in various washes or
layers and worked back in to many times. The end results are studies looser in style and
less figurative but with a greater sense of texture and depth.
Living on the wilder, more isolated west coast of the island, my studio looks out to sea
across the Kilbrannan Sound and sits on the edge of the moor and so unsurprisingly, in
terms of subject matter, my work has of late, not ventured far from such captivating
settings. I revisit the same spots often, to sketch and paint at different times of day,
different times of year and in different weather conditions. I am now more drawn to
finding fresh inspiration from these scenes; looking beyond the familiar to capture the
more transient shift of light and colour as the seasons roll on. The light on the island is
wonderful and the reliably fickle island weather brings ever changing vistas to captivate
and inspire.