For over 40 years Miranda Brookes has been exhibiting in Britain and internationally, from the US to Japan, and as a member of the 62 Group of Textile Artists. After teaching art more generally, from her interest in the needs of young people with multi-sensory impairment she has pursued a meaningful career as both specialist teacher and academic in the field, in local schools and universities including De Montfort, Birmingham, Northampton and Nottingham. Only now, in retirement, has she been able to return to the sole pursuit of her own work, exploring in watercolour themes first touched upon in her textile art.
This return has personal resonance. Her grandfather, George Quarmby, an art educator and HMI, was a painter of landscapes in oils and recorded WW11 damage to St Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. Her mother, Eve, also a painter, used her maiden name, Quarmby; her very last exhibition was at Goldmark Gallery in 2010.
Many years ago, Eve gave her daughter a discerningly selected box of watercolours. They remained in pristine condition, unopened until retirement, when Miranda took up the medium with committed enthusiasm. Actually using the colours from this jewel-like box continues as a precious, familial stimulus for her work.
Inspiration and subject matter in her current work reflect the British landscape tradition, especially the watercolour vistas of Constable, Cotman and Turner, and of contemporaries Jenny Grevatte, Kurt Jackson, Norman Ackroyd and David Parfitt. Her local Charnwood as well as Rutland, Norfolk and the Dorset coast have proved to be significant sources too, reflecting deeper concerns for our environment.
Viewers have commented on the ‘ethereal’ and ‘uncanny’ experience of seeing Miranda’s paintings. She applies her medium in precise and sensitive ways, employing a complex technical range long developed by British watercolourists. The quality of brush type to lay a wash or disturb a previously laid one, when either (or both) are wet or dry, illustrates the subtlety of the medium. Paint can be added by dabbing and dragging, pushing or pulling, or even scratching using the heel of the brush, with wildly different results depending for example, on the texture of the paper. As the reflective property of the paper is fundamental to our experience of watercolour, reserving areas where no paint is applied at all is also central to their effect.
The works on this website merit very close inspection. In two instances, Meeting at the Water’s Edge and Meeting at the Long View, groups of tiny, Turneresque figures are gathered. These are exceptions to the otherwise ‘deserted’ land and seascapes, though there are ‘signs’ of human presence everywhere: hedges, stonewalls, fences, railings, paths, maintained fields and orchards, reservoir perimeters and coastal groynes.
Against a benign focus of flora, fauna and reflective waters, these ‘signs’ remind us always of manmade intervention: of both environmental irresponsibility, and of our efforts to cooperate with the world in which we find ourselves.
Examples can currently be seen at the Tarpey Gallery, Castle Donnington, Derbyshire, UK, www.tarpeygallery.com from April 6th 2024.
Presented with the Michael Harding Award and The John Purcell Paper Prize 2024 at the Royal Institute for Painters in Water Colour exhibition 2024
© Copyright Miranda Brookes