Cherry Pickles – Artists Talk

Cherry Pickles was born in Bridgend, Wales. She did a mathematics degree In Northern Ireland before going to art school at Chelsea and the Slade. After that she had various bits of art school teaching and residencies, most substantially; Falmouth School of Art, Corsham and St Andrews University.

In the early/mid 80’s Pickles lived in Berlin and got to see the groundbreaking  “Zeitgeist”  exhibition in the ruin of the Riechstag.

At about that time she moved to Wales and started teaching at Cardiff Art School and did some drawing workshops in Como, Italy. The first was with Gerhard Richter and the following year with Eric Fischl.

After Italy she was invited to take part in an International Artists residency at Omi, in Upstate NY. Pickles was surprised and impressed by the way Americans were able to paint as if there were no problems attached to it.

She has had several Greek Government Scholarships where she travelled the country extensively sometimes with her family and sometimes alone. She also exhibited the work there; initially landscape and then self portraits.

Pickles taught at Cardiff for a number of years and took time out to do a Residency at Altos De Chavon,  a very strict and impressive art school in the DominicanRepublic. The school was housed in replica Italian village designed by Felini’s set designer and ranked as one of the 9 best art schools in the world.

More recently, she did the Guston McKim residency in Yaddo, which is one of the oldest artists and writers colonies in the US. Its former residents include; Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, Guston, John Cheever, Truman Capote, Patricia Heysmith etc. She used some of these characters in my self portraits, and with the help of other residents, re-enacted some scenes which may or may not have happened between them.

Pickles currently teaches at the Royal Drawing School London and paints in West Wales.

This talk will concentrate on her work and influences.