Inspiring artist searching for exraordinary older people

West Sussex artist Claire Phillips has started work on a new project - celebrating older people doing extraordinary things. Claire from Partridge Green spoke to me about her work, and what drove her to start the collection of local, inspirational people.

"My father painted, and I used to paint with him as a child, I did O level as it was then, and then trained as an engineer. It was only when I had my children that I then thought I just needed a little something for me, and I started a life class in Horsham, and that led to doing a degree course. I did a five year part-time degree course at Northbrook finishing in 2004, and then I carried on from there. It was at Northbrook they encouraged me to work big, and I've never gone back, and I've done portraits ever since. I probably paint about six portraits a year".

"As in all my projects, they start with something happening in my own life. So I think when I was about 52 or 53 I was diagnosed with osteopenia, which is a precursor to osteoporosis. I read a bit and it said impact exercises were good for you, so I took up running to try and fight back. Two of my daughters are runners, and I was constantly going to watch them run, and I thought I could do it instead of watching it, so I took up running to help with the osteopenia. I had quite a few injuries as I'd never run at all, I'd never done anything other than walk the dog. After some foot injuries and went to the podiatrist at a hospital and he said a woman your age shouldn't be running, it's really bad for you, and that just really wound me up, and thought, I just have to do this now. Luckily, when I went back he'd retired and the new podiatrist said it's the best thing you can do for your bones, so he encouraged me, and gave me lots of exercises to strengthen the foot to allow me to run. But because this chap had said that, I thought, isn't anybody else running? Is nobody doing stuff in their 50's and 60's? And I think that's when I came across Daphne, she lived next door to a friend of mine, and my friend said of course there are, a friend of mine’s 85 and running.” (Daphne features in one of Claire's paintings, and on her 85th birthday in August 2024 she completed the combined length of 85 triathlons so far for the year). “It has been a sort of germ of an idea ever started running, and then I started doing longer runs - I did half marathons, and then a couple of marathons, and you notice some older people in there, it's not just younger people. And then I said I think I'd like to paint people that would be inspiring for people my age, and to not think "I can't do that, I'm too old". I started with Daphne, then I came across Celia ( a slalom water skier from Chichester), and it kind of grew from there. I was just looking for people to inspire me really....Selfish!" Claire laughs.

"In the future I'd like to have an exhibition of the portraits if I can get space, I haven't spoken to anyone about it yet, but hopefully a museum, gallery or university will be interested. In the past I've done a couple of other projects, one was on death row, the other on child slavery in India. We were able to put on an exhibition, we had one in London, Worthing and Horsham Museums and people like that, Chichester University I think, and University of Surrey at Guildford."

"I'd like to raise awareness that as you're getting older, you can still challenge yourself."

If you'd like to chat with Claire about possibility of being part of her project, you can email to her at [email protected]