Skip to main content
Bella Bigsby
Oakland, CA
Originally from Norfolk, England I am now a resident of Oakland, California. I have been exhibiting my work in the Bay Area and across the U.S and U.K for the past 15 years.
I have drawn and painted as long as I can remember. Right from the start my inspiration has been nature. I had, like all children, an innate sense of wonder. I am seeing this again with my 5-year-old daughter’s close examination of leaves, shells, flowers and her other natural finds. This wonder at nature is something that I try to maintain in my life and art.
My work is very much to do with the landscape of my childhood home but also shaped by my removal from it. It took distance to see it clearly and to realize how much a part of me the shapes and sounds of nature that had surrounded me were. I don’t think that if I had remained in England my focus would have been so clear.
That is not to say that my new surroundings are not also a great part of my inspiration. They are. But even when I draw from these, I feel there are echoes of that other land always present in my work. I think that is why I am particularly moved by things that are a common link in both places such as foggy skies, marshland, sparrows, crows….
In my oil on canvas paintings I combine tangible elements of the world around me with an imagined nature drawn from my memories from home, my feelings for that lost landscape and a love of the magical nature of myth and fairytale.
Animals and birds that have a rich folkloric tradition are particularly intriguing to me as they are infused with layers of human history as well as their own unknowable narratives.
For me, nature is a separate yet parallel world. I am most interested in the quiet presence of this world, where it touches our everyday one, rather than in nature at its most grand and dramatic. Familiar birds and trees are to me endlessly rich in beauty and meaning.
I have drawn and painted as long as I can remember. Right from the start my inspiration has been nature. I had, like all children, an innate sense of wonder. I am seeing this again with my 5-year-old daughter’s close examination of leaves, shells, flowers and her other natural finds. This wonder at nature is something that I try to maintain in my life and art.
My work is very much to do with the landscape of my childhood home but also shaped by my removal from it. It took distance to see it clearly and to realize how much a part of me the shapes and sounds of nature that had surrounded me were. I don’t think that if I had remained in England my focus would have been so clear.
That is not to say that my new surroundings are not also a great part of my inspiration. They are. But even when I draw from these, I feel there are echoes of that other land always present in my work. I think that is why I am particularly moved by things that are a common link in both places such as foggy skies, marshland, sparrows, crows….
In my oil on canvas paintings I combine tangible elements of the world around me with an imagined nature drawn from my memories from home, my feelings for that lost landscape and a love of the magical nature of myth and fairytale.
Animals and birds that have a rich folkloric tradition are particularly intriguing to me as they are infused with layers of human history as well as their own unknowable narratives.
For me, nature is a separate yet parallel world. I am most interested in the quiet presence of this world, where it touches our everyday one, rather than in nature at its most grand and dramatic. Familiar birds and trees are to me endlessly rich in beauty and meaning.
Wescover creator since 2020
Filter Items
Category
All
Paintings
Prints
Art
Projects Portfolio
Residential Project
Oakland, CA
Residential Project
Oakland, CA
Residential Project
Oakland, CA
Residential Project
Oakland, CA