Anja's Art

In 2002 I retired due to family circumstances. I had enjoyed being an SNA, teaching teenagers with learning difficulties at a secondary school, working with them in class in any subject, as well as organising art and dance lunchtime clubs.

For most of my life I have sketched with graphite and pens and painted in watercolours and in 2000 a dear friend persuaded me to try increasingly popular watermixable oils, especially for painters who work from home. I loved it. It fitted with my love for all nature in such a different way from watercolours, I was intrigued, and that feeling hasn't left me and surprises me every time I discover another aspect of the way it can be used. I still love working in the mediums I worked in before, watercolour, acrylics, graphite, and I began a series of dreamscapes, based not just on nature themes but also in intuition, dreams, meditation.

At times I gave demonstrations of watercolour, graphites or oils in the Garden Centre Group garden centre and after my task of being permanent carer for my husband ended, I hoped I could again take part in exhibitions such as the Southern Nature Art and teach in my new bijou studio. That has been put on a back burner.

I do like to work from live subjects, flowers, trees, garden views, anything that shows beauty, but I use photographic source material for animals, portraits and land- or seascapes. Especially for requests to take subjects from several photos, for example taken during holidays or special occasions, to make one artwork. Commissions are gladly undertaken. Explain what you would like your view of your preferred subject to be and together we can work towards that goal.

Lately I have begun to design mandalas for elderly people in care homes at the request of Meta Killick who is part of Living With Harmony Music Therapy who visited care homes and played their beautiful harp and guitar music while people colour in my mandalas as a calming meditation. It is amazing how the colouring is always beautiful in so many different ways. People really enjoy this activity.

Due to Covid-19 visiting care homes is for now no longer possible. However their music can be found on YouTube and should you want to have some of my mandalas you can email me via the last page of this website and I will email the ones you chose.