Clare Shepherd

I am primarily a landscape painter based in the west country. I’m interested in the way that the three distances of landscape, near, middle and far, stitch together on a flat surface to describe depth and distance.

I make sketches in pencil, pen and watercolour on location. These sketches are the first edit and hold, as well as their own information, my memory of making them.

I return to my studio on The Cranborne Chase and work on large oil paintings. I’m a slow worker; I take my time to work with colour, texture and layers, mostly in oil on canvas, until I’ve achieved in the painting the feeling I had while out sketching.

I trained at The Somerset College of Arts and Technology, The Slade School of Fine Art (where I was Slade Prize winner on graduation) and at Exeter University, where I completed a P.G.C.E. in art teaching.

I have retired from most of my teaching now, but continue to run a full-day workshop once a month in the village of Pimperne, near Blandford Forum.

My sketches are the first edit and hold, as well as their own information, my memory of making them.