Fiona Bell Currie offers recent paintings at Chichester’s Oxmarket Contemporary

Fiona moved from Cheshire to Goldsmiths’ College in the 1970s to train as an art teacher. She worked in various London schools ending up lecturing in observational drawing in the technical illustration department at Ravensbourne College. Fiona illustrated many cookery

and garden books and magazines, worked for Kew and the RHS and created artwork for Crabtree & Evelyn, Sainsbury’s, Boots and Waitrose packaging. She brought out homeware ranges for the National Trust. Juggling illustration with teaching she also designed gardens.

“After forty years in London, I escaped to Chichester in 2019. I’m very happy painting with my two cats in my studio and I love teaching adults painting and drawing at Lavant on Thursday mornings.

“In 2023 I was selected to take part in SkyArts Portrait Artist of the Year. An unforgettable experience, but great meeting Dame Joan Bakewell and Tai-Shan Schierenberg.

“Over the 18 months I’ve been celebrating Sussex, revisiting the same local sites under very different skies and recording them in gouache – paintings from the Trundle, around Bosham and in the very special Bishops Palace Garden in Chichester. I’ve also been painting plums in acrylics, seeing how dark one can go without losing form and suggesting airiness in the lovely garden at Fittleworth House. I returned to Jersey, such a marvellous coast to paint and worked away in a little room in France in April. Once I start I really don’t want to stop.

“Like most artists I’m obsessed with light, colour and tone. Teaching adults really focuses my own practice. Going back to basics is essential.”

Fiona is a passionate fundraiser for Brain Tumour Research, selling countless jars of home-made marmalade, home grown plants and donating the profits from her greeting card sales. She supports the Festival of Chichester by running Art in the Park events, helps Chichester Big Band, is a keen short mat bowler, sings at CFT and with Bellacapella West Sussex Sings and when there’s time, she tends her garden.