Fleur Kreel

Artistic background

I paint at home from memory, from field sketches of landscapes, of rapidly moving scenes, of people doing what they do, animals, from still life. I've always loved paint, pencil – and writing on walls, which got me into trouble at a very early age.
I’ve had solo exhibitions in Sussex and London and one group show – the latter at the Brighton Artists Open Houses.
My paintings are in private collections from Sussex West to East, from London to Sydney and Melbourne.
I continually wish to express my feelings in paint about what I see, the pleasure I get, but also the desire to capture before it disappears because I have a heightened sense of how beauty is threatened by destructive change, how easily lost – quite apart from the natural fleeting of a moment. This challenge of depiction, expression, will keep me trying for the rest of my life. From light on my kitchen table through a glass vase; a simple white jug; a tulip in all its stages from bud to a dead, fragile, tissue paper-like curl. A clean curved edge of chalk hill. A steeply rising field, folds and furrows. An elusive roundness on a round earth in a bowl of sky. The sensational greens of English downland, huddled sheep, the way a calf looks at one. Clarity of tree and hedge, silhouette and shadow. A strange perspective, an optical illusion of slope so near yet so far. Will it still be there tomorrow? I’m lucky though, in finding so much beauty still around. Choosing is not my forte. I paint what I love.