Along with painting, drawing is ‘my thing’. I enjoy life drawing and attend sessions weekly.  I always drew, on envelopes, even as a very small child and first started painting in oil aged 10.  It is a medium I think can’t be equalled for its absolute glow and depth of colour and is something I seem to return to when I have broken out and played with other media.   I also love nature, wild life and the natural world.  As a young mother I was a voluntary tour guide at the Natural History Museum taking classes of children around chosen exhibits and hopefully enthusing them.  I know I got a lot out of it.  I returned to study when I had 4 children at home and needed to mentally break out.   I have a BA (Hons) Fine Art 1997 University of Hertfordshire and  I ran a professional studio for several years, teaching art and life drawing.  I gave up my studio and changed course and practiced millinery having trained in Luton, London, France and New York finally working as a model milliner until 2020 when I ‘retired’.   Post Covid, the Autumn of 2022 I returned to painting and felt glad to come ‘home’.  My paintings from this period have been based on woodland walks, recording the amazing fungi I found there. I still  enjoy working this subject but now landscapes developed during my travels and flowers and my garden occupy my thoughts a lot.  I adore my garden, it is full of fruit and nut trees,  The forms I see in the curly hazel are just wonderful.   In my work these days  I aim to evoke atmosphere of place, mood and sensation.   For instance a bright sunny day seen in April May bouquet or the heady atmospheric feel in the dusky Riverside Walk.   In Feb ’24 I completed my first floral painting in oils.  The challenge to myself was to try  show their delicacy in oils. The  first floral painting called Last of the Summer Flowers was of flowers I had grown from seed in my garden displayed in a favourite vase from my childhood home. and is my first floral greetings card .

3 greeting cards of my woodland fungus-themed work ‘Magpie Inkcap’, ‘Babes in the Wood’ and ‘Moss and Pinkgills’ (see above) are available to purchase at £3 each in biodegradable cellophane wraps.

2 Floral greetings cards, ‘The Last of the Summer Flowers’ and ‘ Wind on the lily pond’ are also available at £3 each.  Message me on beabrownart@gmail.com for a supply of my cards.

All artworks shown here are available to buy.  Please contact Bea for sizes and prices etc.