AN ARTIST who has been increasingly drawn to the local landscape will be displaying her work at The Gallery in Symondsbury.

Annie Ward: Recent Work can be seen from October 12 to 23.

Annie moved to Lyme Regis in 2006 and has been increasingly drawn to the local landscape with its rich and varied history as the impetus for her paintings, the most recent series of which will be the focus of her first solo show at The Gallery.

“It’s wonderful,’ Annie says, ‘to be able to show my latest paintings for the first time in this exciting new gallery right in the heart of the landscape which inspired it.” She goes on to explain her working methods and how her style has developed.

“My work is now shifting towards abstraction, but it is based on my own drawings of Dorset field margins which I interweave with details gleaned from historic maps and contemporary satellite photographs. I’m working intuitively, constantly revising shapes and lines, but allowing the final painting to bear the scars of its evolution.”

“There is always,” she continues, “interplay between planned intention and spontaneity, the deliberate and the accidental, when creating such work. Traditional approaches to perspective have been disregarded, while key features such as field margins, pathways, map symbols and contour lines have become distorted or simplified, sometimes closing in on a tiny detail while playing with scale. The resulting images are constructed abstracts through which I’m gradually developing a personal language of signs and symbols.”

Annie is a member of Lyme Bay Arts CIC, the company that has created The Gallery Symondsbury, and an elected Academician with the South West Academy. To find out more about her work, visitors are welcome to join her on Sunday, October 20 at 1pm when she will be giving a talk and tour around the exhibition.

*Annie Ward: Recent Work, The Gallery, Symondsbury,10.30am to 4.30pm, October 12 to 23 at The Gallery, Symondsbury Estate, Bridport, DT76 6HG. Admission is free, as is parking in the estate’s carpark. For further details, visit lymebayarts.co.uk or symondsburyestate.co.uk