About the Artist
THE ARTIST
Dr Donna Winderbank-Scott
Growing up in West Sussex in the South of England. Donna has painted, drawn and created for as long as she can remember. With lots of practice and a love for colour and detail, she has developed her portfolio over many years to include various styles and media. She continues to experiment with new techniques and is just as adept at making a mess as an adult as she was as a child!
about the artist
Early Years
Supported by her parents with a constant supply of paint, cardboard, scissors and glue, Donna spent her childhood covering every imaginable surface with paint, fabric and in small bits of paper whilst trying out every art and craft technique possible.
Her grandfather, George Lewis, showed her the basics of perspective when she was just about able to hold a pencil, explaining how to accurately copy line and shape and construct realistic images. She then progressed to copying photographs and images from album covers in pencil as well as drawing from life.
Back before the internet and everything being available on demand, Donna had to re-create paintings she wanted on her wall – such as this one of Romeo and Juliet by Leighton. This was her first attempt at oil painting. She didn’t have a canvas and had never heard of Gesso – so painted on a piece of un-primed hardboard she found in her parent’s garage!
She then became obsessed with traditional black and white photography whilst at College and spent many hours in the darkroom (when she was supposed to be studying for her A-levels).
Medical Training
Despite having spent more time in the Darkroom than on her A-levels, she then went on to study medicine at Imperial College, London. That didn't stop her from continuing to paint and draw, undertaking her first commission for Sir Ara Darzi on behalf of the Academic Surgical Unit at St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington. This included a series of 10 oil paintings and a large scale 2m x 3m mural. She also exhibited work with Imperial College Art Society.
Graphic Design
Donna also developed skills in graphic design, with commissions to design the Imperial College School of Medicine Alumni Crest, as well as various logos, posters, illustrations for textbooks and other digital art. Her most recent contribution was designing the logo for the University Hospitals Southampton Neonatal Unit.
Realism
Commissions
Individual commissions form the majority of Donna’s work; focusing on photorealism in oil or acrylics; using the client’s own photographs as reference material. She looks for contrast, lighting and movement in the source material, and especially enjoys painting coastal scenes and water.
commissions
Animals
A large proportion of commission work revolves around animals, and Donna has undertaken many such commissions, initially in oil and acrylic, but later using panpastels and chalk pastel pencils as well.
Original oil and acrylic canvases
Moving away from commissions, this body of work is focused on exploring light, form, structure, and the way detail is implied rather than explicit within the composition. They include a series of futuristic but natural landscapes, where the human influence can be seen but the natural world dominates. Elements of decay, ruin and post-apocalyptic abandonment is central in some pieces, whilst others contain cityscapes viewed from a distance and split over several canvases. Others are more abstract, enabling the viewer to build their own interpretation.
Original oil and acrylic canvases
This body of work continues seamlessly from “After the End” to explore light, form, structure and implied detail but moving the focus from citiscapes to mountain ranges, and rocky landscapes, often inspired by the artist’s own photographs and studies of the French Alps taken whilst snowboarding!
Original oil and acrylic canvases
The natural world, water and reflection is the focus for this collection. It involves taking oil and acrylic into ever more abstract directions with more use of textures and more 3 dimensional elements than in previous collections
