Portfolio of Selected Works
Rooted in New Age Impressionism
My painting practice explores identity, domestic life, and the layered realities of human experience through contemporary impressionism and intuitive mark-making of bold direct brushwork and stark contrasts.
Working primarily in oil, I combine traditional techniques and colour theory with intuitive and expressive experimentation, drawing from surrealism, psychology, and sociological symbolism to create emotionally charged compositions.
Influenced by living history collections, interior spaces and evocative subjects, I examine everyday life as both personal and universal, reflecting on memory, imagination, and our evolving relationship with place. As a woman artist and mother, my work seeks to honour female narratives often rendered invisible, using bold composition and colour to reclaim space for women’s voices within art history.
I aim to bridge past and present through storytelling imagery, continuing impressionist traditions into the modern era while pushing new emotional and visual territory.
The Wool Makers, Oil on board, 44x30cm (2025)
The Wool Makers
This oil painting captures two artisans dressed in traditional 17th-century attire, deeply engaged in the meticulous craft of wool making. Painted from a re-enactment and living history event, the work authentically reflects their dedication to traditional methods which I find fascinating and a desire to keep relevant in a fast paced technical world we live in today, these artistic traditions are important to me. The piece began with a sketch directly on the board, developing through careful outlines and successive layers of paint. I work from the essence of my subjects, reimagining details while remaining connected to its reality. With a focus on rhythm, character, and atmosphere, the composition evolves gradually as each element is refined, ultimately celebrating both the artisans and their timeless craft, a subject I hope to continue exploring further.
Fur Elise
This painting marks the beginning of my tapestry-inspired collection, created as a symbolic dedication to my daughter. Drawing from 18th-century Parisian embroidery and decorative textiles, I reimagined historical motifs through a contemporary, impressionistic lens.
Each flower and vine was developed intuitively on the surface using small, deliberate brushstrokes to echo the delicacy of needlework while building texture through layered oil paint.
Combining still life reference with imagination, the work explores memory, femininity, and continuity between past and present. The brocade-like surface becomes both decorative and narrative, reflecting my interest in domestic beauty and the emotional symbolism embedded within pattern and craft through playful textures and a selective colour palette.
Fur Elise Floral Brocade, Oil on canvas, 61x61cm (2023)
Winter Still Life of Pumpkins and Berries, Oil on board, 33.5x28cm (2025)
Winter Still Life of Pumpkins and Berries
Painted outdoors in natural winter light, this work captures our homegrown gourds and seasonal greens gathered from our garden. Working directly from life and a still life arrangement, I focused on colour relationships, surface texture, and rhythm within the composition, allowing the painting to develop intuitively through layered brushwork and close detailed work.
This was my first experience creating a still life in nature. Facing the challenges of changing light, shifting tones, and unpredictable cold weather conditions continues to shape my plein air practice and deepen my interest in documenting transient moments before they disappear.
The process deepened my connection to domestic environments and seasonal change, reflecting both the quiet sweetness of winter and the personal joy found in everyday family life.
Garden Pond in the Castle Grounds
Painted en plein air in Colchester Castle Park, this work focuses on the historic garden pond and its surrounding landscape, a place I am very fond of and often visit. Using expressive, impressionistic brushwork, I explored light, reflection, and atmosphere, allowing the composition to develop intuitively in response to changing conditions.
The painting reflects my interest in capturing the quiet presence of public green spaces and their connection to personal reflection and the need for us to sit in nature. Through layered texture and colour on board, I aimed to convey both the physical beauty of the park and its sense of calm, grounding the work in observation while responding emotionally to place. My colour palette was limited and inspired by darker early impressionist works. With the bright sunlight on the day, I found myself navigating between softer and deeper tones and capturing movement and shade, eventually finding a balance that emerged from the centre and came together as a harmonious piece.
Garden Pond in the Castle Grounds, Oil on board, 23x21cm (2025)
Bouquet de Rouges
Bouquet de Rouges is an oil painting on canvas board exploring themes of sentiment, memory, and quiet intimacy that run throughout my figurative practice. Painted intuitively in layered, impressionistic brushstrokes, the work centres on a bouquet of impasto red roses arranged in a vintage ceramic vase. I enjoy playing with the idea of additionally adding other artworks within my pieces, to offer a sense of play and connection to past and present.
I often focus on atmosphere and emotional resonance over strict realism, allowing vibrant colours and gesture to guide the composition. I approach still life figuratively, treating objects as vessels of presence and memory. This painting reflects my ongoing desire to create sentimental work rooted in everyday moments that feel deeply personal yet subjective.
Bouquet de Rouges, Oil on canvas board, 30.5x22.5cm (2024)
Historic folly in the Garden
Painted en plein air in Colchester, this work focuses on the historic garden of the Minories Galleries and its surrounding landscape. The Gothic-style summerhouse emerges through shifting summer light, its battlemented façade and arched passageway softened by expressive brushwork as the composition evolved intuitively on site.
Hidden among cascading foliage and weathered walls, the garden revealed itself like a quiet secret, a place of stillness, beauty, and gentle discovery. It was a delight to capture its character, navigating the curves of the architecture while balancing foreground, middle ground, and distance.
The painting reflects my ongoing fascination with spaces where heritage and nature intertwine, exploring atmosphere, light, and the romantic poetry of place within my plein air practice.
Historic folly in the Garden, Oil on canvas board, 23x31cm (2025)
Beside the fireplace, Oil on canvas, 60x50cm (2022)
Beside the fireplace
This surreal commission brings together historic references, antiques, and vintage objects within an imagined interior charged with emotional and psychological tension, a field I am very passionate about. The scene unfolds quietly, revealing a ghost-like figure caught between presence and absence, an ambiguous form suggesting inner turmoil while remaining open to interpretation in an unknown yet familiar world.
Objects throughout the room carry symbolic weight, from the roaring fire that introduces warmth and unease, to the carefully placed artefacts that act as vessels of memory and human attachment. Through layered, impressionistic brushwork and close attention to detail that I have studied and observed in depth, the painting explores themes of psychology, mental health, and our relationship with meaningful objects.
I approach the composition as a narrative space, developing each area like chapters within a story, where heritage, imagination, and lived experience quietly intersect.
Blooming Grandeur
This still life was developed through direct observation and imagination, drawing on the romantic impasto and luminous tonalities of Adolphe Monticelli and early impressionist painting. Through sculptural impasto, ornamental composition, dense colour, and selective bursts of vibrancy, I build atmosphere and emotional presence while extending early impressionist approaches within a contemporary painterly practice.
At the centre of the composition, an antique German urn vase supports cascading porcelain florals, constructed through layered, tactile brushwork. The surface is built with deliberate impasto, allowing light to interact with form and texture, creating depth and movement across the picture plane. The background brings the urn out from the darkness applied with thick paint in almost an expressive style of application on surface, which I often do within my works.
The painting explores the relationship between permanence and fragility, reflecting on the sentimental value we attach to decorative objects as carriers of memory and heritage. Through expressive mark-making and chromatic richness, the work aims to revive historical painterly language while situating it within a contemporary, intuitive practice.
Blooming Grandeur, Oil on board, 20x16cm (2025)
'Who can truly say where reality begins and dreams end?
They are but mysteries of life.'
- Denisa Mansfield