Jenny Matthews

About me

I studied Drawing and Painting at Edinburgh College of Art, graduating with a BA(Hons) in 1986. Since then I have been a professional artist with regular solo and group exhibitions around the UK. In 2007 and 2015 I was awarded prizes at the Royal Watercolour Society (RWS), London, and in 2016 I was nominated for the international watercolour prize ‘Marche d’Acqua’ in Italy. In 2017 I was Artist in Residence at the Museo della Carta e della Filigrana in Fabriano, Italy. For the last 3 years I have led the Scottish group at the international watercolour convention in Italy, ‘FabrianoinAcquarello’ (see video below). My work is in numerous private and corporate collections.

‘Technically….Matthews is brilliant’. {The Times, Giles Sutherland 2017}

Dame Elizabeth Blackadder DBE was my tutor at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh as part of my degree course. From her I developed a love of watercolour, flowers and plants which has subsequently been the mainstay of my career as an artist. The versatility of watercolour lends itself particularly to the depiction of flowers. The quantity of water is key to watercolour painting: I like to play with the balance between detailed work and the abstract effects of too much water.

View Jenny’s demonstration at the FabrianoinAcquarello 2018:

Specialities

I focus on the technique of very wet watercolour with a view to freeing up your technique, whilst marrying this with finer, more accurate brushwork. I will help you to explore the versatility of the medium, thus liberating your approach and helping you to express your response to your subject. Colour is a key element in my work so be prepared for plenty of it!

Things I love

I love culture and meeting people from all over the world. I speak French, am learning Italian and speak a bit of Bahasa Indonesia. I swim with a local club in Edinburgh, and love the outdoors, cycling and walking in the hills close to my home, and gardening.

Listen to an interview with Jenny on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour (mins 7 to 14) here,

‘The work of Jenny Matthews shows… that painting flowers need not be merely botany; that in the right hands inspiration and poetry are completely compatible with precise observation and understanding of the distinctive characters of flowers and plants’. {The Scotsman, Duncan Macmillan, 2016}