“My work is inspired by the landscape that surrounds me. Its beauty and generosity surprises and delights me every day. I am compelled to respond by striving to capture that essence; that colour; the unfolding seasonal drama that never ceases to take my breath away”.
Based deep in the remote Wiltshire countryside Simone paints the surrounding landscape. Working mainly in oil on pre-primed linen canvases that she constructs herself.
Using an intense colour palette she builds up layers of highly saturated paint. Her compositions are often partially abstracted and playful. Superficially the seemingly simple graphic shapes mask a complex process of composition, balance and response to her subject. Colours give the impression of vibrating across the picture plane.
From clumps of trees on the horizon of The Ridgeway to a desolated barn in a field, there is a sense of isolation and vastness of both sky and land. The soft contours and folds of the hillsides ripple and echo forming pleasing but sometimes unlikely patterns that are somehow connected to those that used this land in ancient times; farmers, travellers, shamans, druids, seekers. Long Barrows, Hill Forts, Sarsen Stones and the ubiquitous White Horse Figures.
Simone studied at Heatherley’s School of Fine Art in Chelsea and London Drawing School. She was initially taught to paint as child by the acclaimed food writer Claudia Roden who herself started her career as a successful artist.
She has exhibited her work at Swindon Museum and Art Gallery, Bluestone Gallery Devizes, Caerbladon Malmesbury Solo Show 2024, McNeill Gallery, Pewsey, amongst others.
Her Painting Ridgeway Tree #3 was exhibited and sold at the RA Summer Exhibition in 2022 and is still a best selling print in the Royal Academy Shop.
Simone has participated for many years in the highly successful Marlborough Open Studios Art Trail. She also undertakes commissions as well as selling through local agents and publishers. Her work is in collections in the US, Canada Kenya and New Zealand.
