Jenny Steggles

Jenny Harding wanted to do something creative again. She had loved art at school but hadn't really painted since, and didn't have the confidence to simply sit down at home with a brush. So she looked for a class near her and found one.
She still won't quite call herself an artist, but a year and a half in she is loving working with oils and plenty of colour, and gets a great deal out of the process itself. She paints scenes and people she knows, places tied to happy memories. Above all she's found she's drawn to the natural world: trees, landscapes, the beach. She grew up on a farm in East Sussex, and that pull towards green space and countryside has stayed with her. Her paintings tend to come from places she has spent real time in, Cornwall, Sussex, Whitstable, and one from a family holiday in Scotland, where she says the landscape is simply stunning.
She is inspired by nature, and by the work of Amanda Averello, a fairly local artist whose handling of light she admires and whose work hangs in her home. Water and sea are the things she most wants to get better at. The painting she keeps coming back to, though, is her very first oil in the class: a portrait of her mum. From the early sketch she was sure it would turn out awful and couldn't see how it would ever come together. She kept going week by week, and it became something she's proud of, which surprises her still.