Landscape artist Clare Law is the Artist-in Residence at Lukesland Gardens near Ivybridge.

Clare explains:

“I was running a workshop which I did last week, so it was quite nice to coincide but for me it's lovely to be able to exhibit here because I've done so many paintings over the years that have been inspired by the gardens, so it's kind of a nice way to pay back.

“I grew up on a farm on the edge of Bodmin Moor at Callington and not having anybody arty around me but that's all I ever wanted to do.

“Luckily I had an aunt and uncle who very much encouraged it so at 16 I went down to Falmouth College of Art did an equivalent of A levels down there but in art and design to try and figure out which area I wanted to go into. I then went on to do a degree in illustration.

“Once I graduated with my degree, I went up to London, because this was back in 98, so you needed to be there on the scene to meet agencies and so forth.

“I was illustrating for about two years, and somebody very kindly offered me an exhibition space in Museum Street in London, and that for me just completely changed it.

“In 2005, my oldest child was born, and that's when I picked up the painting knife and oils, and fell in love with it all over again and then we moved back down to Cornwall in 2010.

“I was working with really rich textures for the oil painting and using a knife, no brushes at all but it was really quite over-textured and almost sort of abstract in its way.

“That wasn't what I was wanting to achieve and then I went to the Garden House at Buckland Monachorum and saw the meadow there.

“It was just like a penny dropped. I suddenly realised actually what I could do.

“Since 2010, I've been sort of fine tuning my style that's now, not realising really, I suppose over the years, my style has changed, but it's just natural when you're doing something day in, day out that, you know, things, you get to know your craft a lot better. So “In 2010, that's when I became solely a landscape artist.

“I had clients saying to me, oh you must go to Lukesland Gardens, and when we had COVID and the government said that you could, you know, you're allowed to go out, I saw that Lukesland Gardens were opening,

“I came up and it was absolutely breathtaking.

‘It was springtime, it was May with these tremendously vibrant, bold colours.

I don't know whether it was even more so because of having lockdown or just because it's the first time I'd seen it, but it bowled me over.

“My process is that I'll come on site and take hundreds of photographs, I always sort of position myself so that when I go back to the studio.