About me

 Roz Edwards . Artist.  Hampshire, England

I have been involved in Art my whole life !!

As a child painting and drawing were always my favourite pastimes.  Art was one of my best lessons at school. I enjoyed all the creative and craft subjects, and hated anything to do with Maths and Science.  I took Art up to A'level,  and knew it would be the basis of any career choice I made......so I ended up doing a degree in Education, with Art as my main subject (and PE as my second subject)......and to cut a long story short, ended up working as an Art teacher for 32  years!!!!   I also ran a Photography department, taught Ceramics and Textiles and later on taught Art Textiles up to A'Level.  However, Art was always my most important and favourite area of teaching.

Over the years , I was a teacher in Hampshire, Berkshire, Wiltshire and Oxfordshire.  I did as much of my own Art as possible while teaching, but I was always too busy to really concentrate on it and develop it properly!! 

I have four Maine Coon cats, two daughters, two grandchildren and one husband!! 

I promised myself one day when I left teaching I would find the time to focus on my own painting. To really develop my own style and to make a living from my work.

So this is where I find myself today............!

I am working as an Artist. I have become a member of The Society of Floral Painters. I have my work for sale in exhibitions and galleries. I have my own studio. I am enjoying my art very much at the moment!!  

I have decided to focus mainly on Contemporary Floral Art. I am fascinated with the variety of shapes and colours of flowers. 

I cannot do botanical painting. I do not like working with a plain white background. I get bored just copying things, trying to make them exact. No, that's not for me!!!   I also am not that good with watercolour as it ends up muddied and messy!   I also have absolutely no patience for fine detailed pencil drawing as a preliminary stage to my painting.

So I have developed my own way of working. I do a simple outline in pencil either on to a white or coloured background. That's the end of the pencil in my work!  The rest is done directly with paint.  I love to paint, but I am not particularly keen on drawing!! 

I like pattern and texture. My finished paintings are a series of dots, blobs and lines up close. I start of with blocks of solid colour and just add many layers of smaller areas of colour until I end up with a 000 brush with the smallest dots on the surface!!  My work is fairly impressionistic. I enjoy doing the backgrounds as much as the flowers. My backgrounds are usually swirls of complementary colours that weave around the flowers.

I love bright strong colours and lots of detail in my paintings. I enjoy creating a balance of the subject matter and the background, and the quality of the negative spaces.

I always use acrylic paint. I use fairly standard quality for background areas, and improve the quality as the painting progresses. Most of the initial background gets covered by the time the painting is complete. My favourite paint for many years was Chromacolour.  Recently I discovered a good acrylic gouache as well. I mix these most of the time now for the final stages of my work.

I like to work from real flowers, but in a cold and miserable English climate we do tend to have just too many months without any flowers around. So most of my work is from photographs. I only work from my own photographs. I take photos in my own garden as well as RHS gardens and exhibitions such as the Chelsea Flower show.  I also travel a lot, and take many floral photos all over the world. 

I have many influences from the world of Art.  I love all the Impressionist and Post Impressionist painters. I love the landscapes of Gustav Klimt, and the bright colours of the Fauvist painters, the patterns of Aboriginal art, and the architecture of Gaudi.  I also really admire many not yet famous, "unknown" contemporary floral painters who are working today. 

I sell my work as originals, prints and greetings cards.

I write two blogs, have a Facebook page, do Pinterest, and Twitter. I shall hope to self promote through these mediums. I try and update them as often as I can. I have listed all of these on a separate page.

I have work in a few galleries and exhibitions. I shall list all these on a separate page.



Roz