Eden Valley Artists : EVA : Artist group : Carol Steptowe : Painter

Mixed media : Chriss Langworthy

Chriss was raised in Portchester, Hampshire and at 18 she wanted to attend Art College, but her parents were not convinced that art was a viable career. She therefore attended evening classes and was taught oil painting, creating numerous copies of old Masters. In the late 1980’s she moved to Crowborough and was soon drawn to the love of the outdoors and painting flowers.

In 1997 she achieved her ambition and attended West Kent College completing a foundation course in Art and Design, finally attending Brighton University graduating with a Fine Art degree in 2001.

At University her main inspiration was her passion for sport, the early work focussed on squash and tennis and the memories and feelings related to playing in a competitive environment. Her dissertation revolved around aspects of women in sport; this led to Chriss producing a series of works based on the idea. These paintings were mixed media, using crochet, oil and acrylic on canvas to develop texture and also had a limited ‘masculine’ colour palette. The work included images from magazines and also used photographs of women squash and tennis players to create ‘pretty outlines.’ She was drawn to how little coverage a good woman sports player received compared to her male equivalent or indeed other attractive but less successful competitors.

Chriss’s most recent challenge has been her involvement with golf, learning the game from scratch. Many a golf ball has found a pond, trees, or even buried itself in the undergrowth never to be seen again. Inspired by the observations of the plant life in ‘close up’ Chriss has used images taken from the tangles of the undergrowth and nature for her most recent work, this has taken her back to the basics of painting, feeling the paint and re-inventing the image with colour, shapes and patterns.

e : chriss@stonecircleart.co.uk
w : www.stonecircleart.co.uk