Haidee-Jo Summers

Haidee-Jo is a full-time professional artist known for painting gardens, landscapes and seascapes 'en plein air'. Vice President of the Royal Institute of Oil painters (VPROI) and an elected member of the Royal Society of Marine Artists (RSMA) her work can be seen each year at the Mall Galleries in London in these prestigious society exhibitions.

As well as a busy painting life, Haidee-Jo is an author of two books on oil painting and an editorial consultant for The Artist magazine, alongside David Curtis ROI RSMA. Her first book, ‘Vibrant Oils’ (published by Search Press), has been reprinted in Spanish, Italian, French and Chinese. Her second book 'Plein air painting in Oils' has been printed in English and Russian language editions. She has produced two popular DVDs with APV films which demonstrate her painting process en plein air.

Although oils are very much her preferred medium, in the 1990’s Haidee-Jo produced a large body of work for the Encyclopaedia of Watercolour Techniques and is an avid sketcher. In recent years she has been invited to judge UK and international plein air events, after winning many prizes for her work which features fresh and vibrant brushwork coupled with keen drawing and observational skills.

Haidee-Jo gained a degree in illustration following an art foundation course and graduated in 1994. She has been exhibiting and teaching ever since, in recent years having cut back on teaching commitments to focus on painting and writing. She believes very much in continuing to grow and develop, all the while striving to express her personal voice in paint and to do so more and more succinctly.

‘My work is a celebration of light filled moments revealed in rich and vibrant oil paint using my personal visual language of fresh and direct brushmarks. Painting en plein air is central to my practice but I am equally at home working from a model, still life or interior. I find beauty in the ordinary, mundane and intimate rather than the grand vista. Coastal locations, domestic interiors and gardens and allotments provide me with rich and endless subject material.

My approach is one of simplicity and economy, striving to make every mark count in my earnest pursuance of capturing the poetry of a fleeting effect of light.’