Jo Barnard

Jo Barnard has lived in Wivenhoe since 1972. She taught until her retirement, at Broomgrove Junior School, where her interest in creative learning and practice enabled the children to respond with confidence and strong individual statements.

Her own painting after some experiments using a variety of media, moved toward watercolour, and this has become an important and continuing interest.

She chose to attend a series of residential courses and summer schools in order to deepen and develop her experience. This gave her opportunity to work with painters whose approach and art interested her. These included Pam Dan, Dennis Creffield, John Epstein, Jennifer Andrews, Mary Harding and Margaret Morgan.

Jo says of her work, � I love East Anglia and am strongly moved by the ever changing moods, colours, lights and darks of skies, water and landscapes, and nearer to home the joy of my own garden�.

�I spend a lot of time looking, feeling and experiencing. Perhaps it is a flower � but it becomes pure colour form and shape. I look, I analyze, I do not know in which direction it will take me. I love colour above all else�.

�When I see something that interests me, I am into brushes and paint from the beginning � no graphic tools, and from that point on the work changes and develops. I never know where it will finally lead�.

Exhibition of Jo’s Watercolours – The Wivenhoe Gallery – March 2008

photos Jeannie Coverley

Jo Barnard

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