Nigella

Clare Simmonds lives and works in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. She graduated from Bucks New University in 2008 with a BA Fine Art and is now an award winning commissioned artist.

I am a painter who works with acrylic on found and pre-used canvases. People (and sometimes their pets too) are the focus of my work. I'm not interested in photo-realistic perfection or traditional ideas of beauty. Character, expression and narrative are fundamental to the strength of my paintings, along with bright invasive colour at every turn.
 
I am a big collector of all things slightly naff and this has a big impact on my work. Patterns and bric-a-brac, the kind you used to see in your grandmother’s house lurk in the corners, insects and birds creep into the background. Joining them there is a lifelong love of the green places I grew up in and flashbacks from wet Sundays spent visiting country houses.

Celebrities occasionally grace my work, their personalities and features satirised in ways I can express verbally, sometimes even with a grudging respect. I am a frustrated comedian in paint.