Annette Price
Abstract Artist
I am a London-based abstract artist. My paintings begin long before I pick up a brush: on a river in spate, underwater on a night dive, deep inside a disused mine. This page is where you can get to know me a little better.
My Studio
My studio is unlike most. It lives in my partner's garage and driveway in the countryside, forty miles from my home in central London. I paint outdoors most of the time, surrounded by birds, plants and open sky. When it rains, I retreat to the garage doorway, the open door acting as an umbrella above my head, while rain drums on the ground and bounces off the leaves of nearby plants. For an artist inspired by water, there are worse places to work.
It is an unconventional setup, and not without its challenges. Storage is limited, the winter days are short, and there are no open studio days where visitors can drop in. But there is something about painting in that space, with baroque music or the Red Hot Chilli Peppers drifting out of the garage, or simply the sound of birdsong and rain, that feels completely right.
Where the Ideas Come From
Inspiration tends to arrive through experience rather than observation. A recent visit to disused slate mines in North Wales left me with a notebook full of ideas and a camera full of images that will shape a future collection. The walls were extraordinary: minerals dissolved in rainwater had leached slowly out of the rock over decades, building up formations of unexpected colour and beauty. But it was the human story that moved me too: the old machinery left behind, the rotting timbers, the little slate trucks still sitting on their rails, the sense of lives once lived in those dark, crumbling passages.
Another example is sea kayaking, which offers a completely different kind of inspiration. Rock hopping along the south coast with a friend, reading the movement of open water. There is something exhilarating about surfing a wave, fast and wild, right up to the moment it capsizes you and you're upside down with your face being ground into the sand on the way in. All part of the fun.
Photo: Cwmorthin Slate Mine, North Wales, UK.
Creating The Artworks
Standing in front of a blank canvas is always exciting. My starting point might be photographs from a dive, kayaking or underground trip or simply a feeling I want to capture. I never 'copy' my photographs, it is always a subjective, abstract interpretation. Sometimes I plan the composition. Other times I make a few marks just to break the white space up, and let the painting find its own direction from there.
My notebook is never far away. I keep detailed notes as I work, recording materials, processes, thoughts and ideas as they emerge. It is partly practical, useful when talking about a painting later, but it also keeps me present and attentive to what is happening on the canvas.
When a painting is not working, I leave it alone. Sometimes for a few hours, sometimes for months. The answer usually comes eventually, and there is something satisfying about returning to a piece with fresh eyes and suddenly knowing exactly what it needs. Occasionally a struggling painting becomes something entirely different: an underpainting, its texture and colour allowed to show through subsequent layers, adding depth that a fresh canvas never could.
From Camera to Canvas
My route into painting was anything but direct. At art school I specialised in science-fiction illustration, building models as reference for my paintings. But the college had an excellent photography department and I became completely absorbed by the photographic process. The models quietly disappeared, and within a few years of leaving I was working as an editorial photographer. Water became my subject, and the camera became my tool.
The shift towards painting began in much the same way. I started making models again, intending to photograph them, and once again they gradually fell away, leaving me with the making itself. I experimented with digital drawing on an iPad, playing with shapes, colours and abstraction. But something was missing. I wanted more physical engagement, more direct expression.
The pandemic gave me the time and space to find it. My love of water found its way back into the work almost immediately, and painting, it turned out, was exactly where I needed to be.