Clare Shepherd, one of a twin, showed early interest in painting, enrolling at a local art school at 6 years old. She went on to study at the The Slade School of Fine Art and was The Slade Prize winner on graduation. She lives and works on The Cranborne Chase in Dorset; solitude and rural places, even wilderness, are of paramount importance to Clare. Exmoor is a place where Clare spent much of her childhood (having grown up in nearby Taunton) and a place to where she returns several times a year.
Art depends so much on an artist searching their own feelings and responses to that which they look at. Artists search for a fundamental 'response' and 'truth' to their environment, which then, like a Chinese Whisper, can travel though various stages from one version of an image to the next, paring down to the vital elements. When I'm out in a landscape I'm monitoring, collecting, breathing the place around me and responding in my drawing books. I work rapidly from these drawings, often in a different medium, and from those works I follow on with work in all media back in my studio. Imbued in every location-drawing is a huge amount of memory, and as the paintings in the studio take on their own lives, my strong memories become an integral part.
Clare has exhibited all over The West Country, and in London too. She has won many prizes in open exhibitions and has commissions and pieces of work in collections all across the world.
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