Ooh la la! French artist stages pocket-sized exhibition of ten paintings in Rugby

A French artist is staging a pocket-sized exhibition of ten paintings here in Rugby.

Claudine Turner’s ‘A Year’s Journey’ through the British social calendar is being held at Rugby Art Gallery & Museum until Saturday, September 9.

Unlike the conventional painter, Claudine has adopted an illustrative approach combining painting with geometric style illustration, and a graphic artist’s eye for pictorial detail which is set out with millimetric precision.

Since coming to England in 1970 aboard the midnight boat train from Paris, Claudine has become fascinated by the British way of life.

She said: “Even though I enjoyed painting and drawing as a child I never had any ambition to be an artist. What I wanted was to work with flowers. I left school at 14 to be apprenticed to the florist trade, but the pay was poor, the hours long and sometimes antisocial – looking after the shop on my own at that age was considered by my mother too risky.

“Years later, after I came to England, I was encouraged to paint. I moved to Kettering in 1975 where I was elected a member of the Kettering & District Art Society. After a Foundation Course in Art at Tresham College, I read for my degree at Leicester Polytechnic as a mature student, worked in commercial art for 20 years in the studio of one of the county’s leading manufacturers of breakfast cereals based here in Northamptonshire."

“My style of work has evolved over the years. The influence of commercial art has stayed with me. I have also been inspired by the lesser-known French cubist painters Fernand Léger, and Juan Gris, the poster artist A M Cassandre, and the Clyde shipbuilding pictures by Englishman Stanley Spencer.”

She has exhibited in galleries in both London and the East Midlands since 1973 and won several prizes for her work.

Claudine added: “This will be my very first solo show and my first show in Rugby. I am looking forward to lovers of British life having this opportunity to see for themselves the mirror I have created offering for their divertissement an affectionate picture of my adopted country.”

For more information, visit https://www.ragm.co.uk/