Artist: Debra Stroud
Title: Hemisphere I (canvas)
Size: 8" x 8"
Edition Size: Artist Hand Signed and Numbered Limited Edition to 195
Medium: Giclée (canvas)
About the Artist: HISTORY & BACKGROUND

My first creative attempt, at the age of two and a half, was to peel off the nursery freeze that my Mother had applied to the wall minutes earlier.

I have always had a creative mind and as a child I used to send my inventions to various toy manufacturers. One of my designs was for an all enclosed sledge encapsulated in a sort of gyroscopic pod so that you stayed in a stable position as you hurtled down a snowy hill. The company – ‘Triang’- liked my design and sent me a kind and heartening letter and a doll’s cot!

Creativity was very much encouraged at my first school in Guildford. Music, art and drama were a daily activity. Unfortunately, the School closed when I was nine and subsequent Schools failed to nurture the creative spirit. It was later, at the age of fourteen, that I was inspired by Guildford School Of Art and their Photography course. I took armfuls of information home from the careers fair and enthusiastically told my parents. My Father said ‘No way’! so I lost heart and left school.

Much later I took myself to College to sit my exams and went on to read Psychology at Sussex University. I then left Sussex to study Philosophy in London.

Artistically, my background has been geared more towards photography. Painting has been a natural evolution for me and I find I am able to express different qualities. My entire family are creative and artistic, so I have had a firm foundation.

I was born in Guildford and have travelled far and wide, having a variety of really diverse jobs. I have worked as a freelance photographer, as a courier to New York, an executive in sales and marketing, and in Noise Pollution for a local authority.

I now live in Hampshire, not far from the sea and the South Downs.

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF

I set myself a work plan with strict time schedules. I have to be very disciplined with myself as I tend to get sidetracked into lots of trivialities. Once I have started to paint, usually about 10.30am, I tend to keep going until 1pm. I have to remember to stop and eat, otherwise I forget and get very grumpy.

Before I start to paint I find I get quite a build up of creative energy where I am subconsciously working out my ideas - a bit like an impending storm.

I am very energetic and I don’t like standing still, so I go to the gym or go for a walk. If I am painting until 1pm, I then have to go out and reunite myself with the rest of humanity, in other words - shopping! Otherwise you can feel too detached. I then work from 3pm until 6pm – sometimes later.

Dinner is an important event of the day for me and a time to relax and become a human being again with the person I live with.