Céret artist Bridget Rook-Waterhouse

Bridget Rook-Waterhouse was featured recently in ’Artists & Illustrators’ magazine, to which many France-based English artists subscribe. The magazine showed Bridget at work in her studio in her house in Ceret. "It was quite a boost for me", says Bridget, who delighted in describing her studio to the magazine.

She had been a full-time artist in the UK for several years, but one of her reasons for moving to Ceret was the discovery, while on holiday, of the Sant Roch atelier of Pierre Grau, an unconventional artist, who runs acrylic painting classes as well as life-drawing and sculpting.

Bridget’s work is mostly in acrylic and covers a wide range of styles, from fantasy collage to dramatic life-sketches. She has always been an artist at heart, but felt very constrained in her early years at Tonbridge Grammar School in Kent: "The art teacher liked us to be precise, drawing plants and flowers with an H pencil, or spending hours ruling out a piece of lettering in Roman capitals. It was pretty soul-destroying!" she says.

"I wanted to go to Art School when I left Tonbridge, but in those days (quite a long time ago!) one had little choice, and I was bustled off to earn a living. Fortunately, I ended up working in women’s magazines, and, although I was not an ’artist’ in the magazine sense, I spent a lot of time carousing in the art department!

Then I had the opportunity to move to Norfolk, and enrolled at the Norwich School of Art. "I won’t say I learnt all I ever wanted to know about art there, but it was a useful exercise, and I tried out things like etching for the first time."

"Now, however, I just take the easy route: I carry a little sketch-pad wherever I go, and I paint whatever I feel like, when I feel like it!" smiles Bridget, who is known as "Brigitte" to her French friends.

Bridget holds exhibitions of her work in her atelier at 3 Rue de la Paix, Ceret. For an appointment, phone 04 68 39 75 94.
Visit her web-site here.

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