Effie Romain - Fine Artist

I have been painting all my life. I used to have the Art Garden Gallery in Lower Redland Road which closed in 2002. I ran it with that delightful man Graeme Thomson who sadly died 2 years ago last November. When I first opened the gallery I used to occasionally hang one of my own pictures just to get some feedback and one time I did a very large watercolour to hide a crack in the wall. I signed it Harriet Walker, I think, and was surprised when somebody asked me if I had any other work by said person. I had to think for a minute and then recovered . "Any amount of it - oh yes". With a bit of confidence I had a show at the New Gallery in the RWA and now I’ve taken part in the West Bristol Art Trail for the last 2 years.

I have no goal beyond the manipulation of paint itself and no subject matter and tend to paint anything that appeals. In what seems like a former life now, I prepared a book about container gardening with Kathy Brown that was published by Penguin and was really pretty successful. Then, as I gardened more I was attracted to herbs and prepared a book for Dorling Kindersley.

I do like painting flowers and I try to garden as well as paint. I also like to paint 'dialogues' or 'conversations'. These give you the opportunity to explore body language and the relationship between 2 or 3 people. I paint landscape too, usually outside, but this is an indulgence because it is really just an excuse to play outside. As I collect a larger body of work I am quite pleased by how well they are 'wearing'. I can live with them and sometimes I see really old ones and I'm both surprised and pleased that they still have something to offer. They were never 'of their time' so why should they date ?

Gallery of a selection of images can be seen on my Flickr site here