Jo Starkey

'I am originally from Nottingham where I spent a happy childhood growing up in a country village on the outskirts of Nottingham. From an early age, I had a keen interest in the arts, and I spent my secondary school years training to be a dancer, by earning a place at a stage school in Surrey where I became a boarder. However, my career as a dancer was not meant to be as my love for painting became my number one passion. I decided to hang up my ballet shoes when I was 16, and focus on my journey to become an artist. After completing art college in Nottingham, I then moved to London where I began to forge my career as an artist.

Although I went to art college, I am mainly self taught, and have learnt my skills as an artist by experimenting with different materials and harnessing new techniques, which have evolved over the course of time. I try and depict the essence of nature and its magic into my paintings, which are created using mixed media on silk, which is mounted on board. I use the silk as a canvas and build up layers using lots of different materials, which give it a three dimensional effect. This layering process really lends itself to the scenery that I paint creating a feeling of depth and texture.

I like to play with colour and sometimes this will dictate the composition of a painting. I always have my camera to hand which allows me to capture a beautiful scene as and when it happens, and I am never short of inspiration as I am surrounded by the beauty of nature, which is in abundance where I now live in Sussex. I generally work from photographs that I have taken, and enjoy putting my own interpretation on a natural scene, to give it a more contemporary look.

I work from my studio at the Turner-Dumbrell Workshops in Ditchling, East Sussex'