Vanessa Perry FRSA
Have you ever been happily lost at sea? This is how one of my customers describes his experience when he looks at the painting he purchased from me.
I’m a visual artist based on the southeast coast of England, and I love being in and around water. My art is shaped by my daily encounters with the shoreline, where the water, the sky and the silence meet. Where tides disappear and return.
I’m in my element when I’m near water but I haven’t always lived by the sea. I was brought up in Newbury, Berkshire. I moved back to London in 2009 after studying art there in the late 1980s. It was in 2014 when I made the move to live by the sea in Folkestone, Kent.
Credit: Anima Mundi Academia Art Magazine
My creative process is a combination of personal excavation and intuition, and it all starts with colour. Having established the colours I want to work with I create a rich texture onto the canvas with plaster, using a palette knife. My intention, when creating these textures, is to remember the organic shapes of the land and sea. My coastal environment plays an important role in my creative process, not just visually but also viscerally, with the everchanging weather patterns that influence the light, shadows and sound.
At the end of August 2025, I will be returning to Brussels to exhibit two of my paintings in a ‘collective’ exhibition in Watermael-Boitsfort, Brussels.
In March 2025 I exhibited six paintings at ArtSpace London. The exhibition took place over two weeks at the very scenic St Katharine Docks, London. It was great to meet so many collectors at the opening night, and it was a pleasure to have some of my work selected in a small pop-up event after the formal show had closed.
In February 2025 I was honoured to receive a fellowship from the Royal Society of Arts London. The RSA Fellowship is a global network of over 30,000 individuals connected to the Royal Society of Arts (RSA).
In 2007 I launched the Vanessa Perry Gallery, my gallery website. Around the same time my work was exhibited at the Great Northern Art Show in Harrogate and the Affordable Art Fair in Bristol. In 2019 I launched fromsomethingimagined.com to showcase the collections of my black and white photography.
In 2006 I curated, and exhibited in, the first ever Vodafone Limited Art Exhibition in Newbury, Berkshire. A large number of pieces sold, and a donation from each sale was made to the charity, Youth Net. I was honoured to receive a nomination for a Community Award from the charity. During the same year I was commissioned by Vodafone to draw a ‘Vodafone Corporate Dream Board’ after attending a workshop with the Corporate Sales Team.
I had my first solo exhibition in 2003, ‘The Dominating Factor’. I exhibited twenty paintings and drawings, all of which marked several important milestones in my life. For me, painting is a way to express and learn from my experiences, almost providing me with a catalogue of my past. You can read the full review by Pat Eastop below.