Rose Di Mascio - Artist

I have painted and sketched throughout my life. My work reflects my surroundings and love of nature. As a child I lived in the Morecambe Bay area and loved exploring the coast and hills.

I returned to the area to study art and archaeology at Lancaster University and then lived in Durham where I continued painting and worked for short periods in Durham Archaeology Museum, Beamish Museum and did Art Therapy. Through the latter I became interested in psychiatric nursing and did my training. As the nursing demanded a different mindset to the concentration and isolation needed to do art I drifted away from exhibiting and concentrated more on the nursing while still doing my art during those rare moments of free time.

Then the urge to paint returned with a vengeance and I decided to open my own gallery, The Tower House Gallery and art studio, Seaton Sluice showing my own work and the work of many other local artists. This was a sociable experience, but did not allow me as much time as I would have liked to pursue my own work. Ten years later I am again having a lifestyle change and I am planning to return to the North West, unable to resist the lure of the mountains.

I use a wide range of media including oil, watercolour, gouache, and acrylic. I sketch with pens and sometimes plan paintings with charcoal, but often a painting changes as I go along. I like to provoke a sense of mystery in my work and to capture atmosphere. In contrast to this the concentration needed to do botanical paintings has also helped me to set technical challenges for myself and to look in detail at the beauty of plants and wildlife.