Fiona Bell Currie is offering her first exhibition in Chichester

She is showing nearly 40 paintings in oil, acrylic, watercolour and gouache featuring a great diversity of subjects from local landscapes celebrating Chichester’s trees and coastline, to allotments, spring flowers, fruit, vegetables and the odd cat and fox. “You can see the change of focus, literally, in early pieces from the 1980s with fantastic detail to more recent emotionally responsive paintings”, says Fiona who finds joy in the smallest thing, exploring the surface, texture and shape, whether a solitary fig or pebbles on a beach.

Oxmarket chairman Sophie Hull said: “The year has started extremely well with the sensational and very successful exhibition of Catherine Barnes and now we have Fiona Bell Currie. The Oxmarket is delighted to welcome her for her first exhibition and outstanding works. We have an exciting programme of exhibitors again this year and looking forward to a number of new exhibitors and the return of long-standing friends returning to us.”

Fiona grew up in Cheshire and went to Goldsmiths in 1972 to train as an art teacher. She taught at a London comprehensive (“the Milliband brothers were pupils but they didn’t do art!”) Later, waiting for eye surgery she received many get-well-soon flowers which she began to draw. As her sight improved so did her botanical painting, to such a degree she later worked for the Kew Herbarium and at the RHS. For decades Fiona then juggled illustration with being a part-time lecturer at Ravensbourne College of Art grilling technical illustrators on their observational skills.

She still enjoys teaching adults now in Lavant and passionately believes everyone can learn to draw and paint. She says she loves those magical, theatrical scenes of glancing sunshine. “The other day at the recycling centre, the orange and violet bins just smacked up against a really deep slate sky. These moments are so fleeting, they’ve gone in an instant but we all see them. I celebrate light and colour. It might be dramatic clouds and sea or backlit figures in snow. I sees pattern everywhere and marvellous compositions in the arrangement of tables in the M&S coffee shop!”