Where I stand with contemporary British landscape painting: For me, it's about how a painting makes you feel. What can paint do to make you experience something, rather than just look at a picture? That question, which Turner was asking over 200 years ago, is still the question I'm asking every time I step into the studio.
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Shazia with pupils at Westbourne House School
A YEAR OF INSPIRING YOUNG ARTISTS
If you're a school in Sussex, Surrey, or Hampshire looking to enrich your art programme with visiting artist workshops, I'd love to hear from you. Whether it's inspiring younger pupils, guiding scholarship students, or creating exhibition-worthy pieces, I work collaboratively with art departments to support their curriculum and celebrate student creativity.
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The 8 Artists Who Shaped My Vision
Throughout my thirty-year career as a painter, certain artists have acted as guiding lights—not because I want to paint like them, but because they've shown me what's possible when you're brave enough to push boundaries, to trust your materials, and to believe that painting still has something vital to say. Here are my 8 artist influences.
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Joan Mitchell
Joan Mitchell: Intuition and Control
Joan Mitchell was a big influence on me as an art student. Why? Because she was the first to do crazy things with paint—to really do things with it, to make it move and sing and shout.
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Jenny Saville
Jenny Saville: The Master of Everything
You could sit with a Jenny Saville for the rest of your life and still be surprised by what she has done with the paint. She's constantly pushing boundaries, challenging our perceptions of what painting is today and its relevance in our image-saturated world.
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Fiona Rae
Fiona Rae: Precision in Abstraction
Fiona Rae puts ideas of abstraction to the test and wins every time. Her work taught me that intuitive painting doesn't mean uncontrolled painting; it means being so in tune with your process that every mark, however spontaneous it appears, is exactly right.
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