Colleen Conti - Fine Artist

I am a Sussex landscape artist living and working in Horsham. I was the Head of Art at a Secondary School for 24 years until retiring in 2020 to focus entirely on my own work.

My work originates with landscape, which I am approaching increasingly intuitively, as this allows me the freedom to focus on the essence of a particular place, and my own experience of being in it. I enjoy the co-existence of natural and cultivated aspects of the landscape, its resulting patterns and rhythms and how these can be translated through the physical process of painting: gestural brushstrokes, washes, and fine delineation. The changing light, forms and colours of the landscape through the seasons has a direct influence on my palette. I am absorbed by the possibilities which arise from combining colours in different ways: contrasts & harmonies, tonalities, layers and juxtapositions. As a piece progresses, I respond to the possibilities suggested by random marks interacting with intentional shapes in order to achieve rhythm and balance. My images convey a sense of the original places which inspired them, filtered and shaped by my process and emotional insight.

Qualifications

BA Hons Fine Art – Brighton Polytechnic

Post Graduate Art Teacher's Certificate – Goldsmith's College

Post Graduate Diploma, Printing & Publishing Studies – London College of Printing

MA English Literature – Sussex University

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Exhibitions

1985 Royal Society of Painters in Watercolours Annual exhibition, Mall Galleries, London. Winner of Windsor & Newton Student Prize

1988 Solo exhibition paintings, Horsham Arts Centre

1990 Solo exhibition life drawings, Brighton Library

1992 Brighton Festival Exhibition at Varndean Sixth Form College

1992 Group exhibition of life drawings, Gardner Centre, Sussex University

1992 Sussex Open ‘Land & Sea’, Brighton Museum & Art Gallery                

1993 Contributor to ‘Teachers in Art’, Gardner Centre Sussex University

1995 Sussex Open ‘Boundaries’, Brighton Museum & Art Gallery

1998 Contributor to ‘Those Who Can’t, Teach’, exhibition West Sussex Art Teachers, Horsham Arts Centre

2016 Millais Art Teachers exhibition, Capitol Arts Centre, Horsham

2021 International Juried Art2Life Exhibition

2021 Highly Commended Award in the Association of Sussex Artists Annual Exhibition, at Drill Hall, Horsham

2022 Shortlisted for Tebbs International Art Award

2022 Selected for Tebbs open call on-line exhibition