Celia de Serra
Born in 1973 Celia de Serra spent her childhood in rural Kent and West Dorset graduating from Exeter University in 1995 with a Fine Art and English degree. In the Nineties her art practice was predominately concerned with abstraction but she retained an obsession and attachment to her rural roots and went on to produce a body of work investigating and responding to rural environments, from the West Country to Shropshire and Wales.
These densely worked, exquisite landscapes are characterised by an obsession with light and mood. Through the discipline of drawing and painting figuratively, Celia is engaged intensely in the act of looking, and concentrates on a kind of visual scrutiny to which the viewer is drawn, generating a particular viewer involvement and a visceral sense of ‘being there’. Notable for their absence of humans and buildings, her landscapes are nevertheless perhaps reminiscent of Caspar David Friedrich's. Even without Friedrich's solitary figures these landscapes seem to have a human presence. There is also an implicit allusion to the notion of narrative; the track or pathway being seen as a metaphor for this. This implied narrative provides no answers, only suggestions, producing a sense of desire or promise and subsequently an emotional charge. Although Celia's work may hark back to romantic artists it also maintains close sympathies with the new generation of obsessively observational artists.
Celia has completed commissions for both Somerset and Dorset NHS Trusts where a collection of her paintings now remain on permanent display. She has been granted an award for her drawings from the Oppenheim-John Downes Memorial Trust. Her work is in private collections in the UK and Europe.
 Beaten Track |
 The Hope Woods, 2011 |
 Early one afternoon, 2011 |
 A Long and Winding Path |
 Sound of Silence No.3 |
 River Way, 2011 |