Monica Ismay Horn A.R.C.A: Fine Artist  www.IsmayArts.co.uk

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FULL NAME: Monica Ismay Horn

MARITAL STATUS: Divorced, with 3 grown up children

LIVE IN: Minehead, Somerset UK

PLACE OF BIRTH Mandeville, Jamaica, West Indies

My early years were spent in Jamaica, which I left in 1956 to live in Cornwall. I trained at Falmouth Art School, and the Royal College of Art, becoming an Associate in 1966, and winning the David Murray Scholarship for Landscape Painting in the same year. I taught for Oxford Community Education and at degree level for St Clare’s Oxford till 1997, when I moved to Exmoor so I could concentrate on painting. I recently gave up teaching for Somerset Community Education and now run private classes. Until it closed in 2006, I taught for two weeks each year for Innemore School of Painting Mull.

I have exhibited in the Summer Exhibition of the Royal Academy, the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford and The South West Academy of Fine and Applied Arts. My drawing of Roger Opie hangs in New College, Oxford. I am a member North Hill Artists and a past member of the Oxford Art Society. I have exhibited with galleries in Somerset, Devon, Oxfordshire, and Glasgow and demonstrated for several years in the materials tent at Art In Action. I usually work in Watercolours and Acrylics, with occasional forays into Oils, Oil Pastels, and pastels.

In 2000 I opened my studio for Somerset Art Week, which resulted in a bursary and training in PhotoShop from Walk in the Land of Light, and this has led to my present interest in computer generated prints and the abstract and relief work that stems from them. I was briefly a member of the Somerset Printmakers, but resigned due to pressures of teaching. My prints have been hung in The South West Academy of Fine and Applied Arts, the Royal Bath and West and ‘accepted not hung’ at the RA Summer Exhibition, and I have participated in the International Print Fair, Hamburg

I am essential a lyrical painter, influenced by the environment of my native Jamaica, as well as by the landscapes of Canada and England. I seek to celebrate nature, concentrating on the harmony of relationships to achieve a rhythm and balance in my work. My chief influence has been the work of the Canadian Group of Seven; more noticeably in my recent paintings, where my concern with colour, texture and pattern have developed and found expression in experimenting with different media. Having taught for many years such diverse topics as sculpture, batik, print and paper making, I have long felt that I would like to expand the more conventional way that I paint and incorporate some of these disciplines into my work. The Bursary from ‘Walk in the Land of Light’ gave me the impetus to experiment, as I was using Photoshop to produce abstract images, one of which I then converted into a relief. Sadly we only had three weeks from training to exhibition, during which I was also teaching, so that shortage of time curtailed what I was able to achieve in the planning and execution of the relief. I thoroughly enjoyed working with Photoshop and have been developing and expanding the digital, three dimensional and mixed media aspects of my work.
 

If you want to buy a picture or discuss a commission,  then send E mail to monica@ismayarts.co.uk  
Copyright © 2007 www.IsmayArts.co.uk
Last modified: May 13, 2007