Colleen Conti
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
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