User:JohnLumby/Prudence Mary Bishop

Prudence Mary Bishop (née Taylor) (known as Prue Bishop) is a British  landscape painter and  watercolourist who has become known for devising an artistic genre called “Sculptural Watercolour” that is a  Registered Trademark.

Her definition of Sculptural Watercolour is very specific: the application of paint made of pigments suspended in  gum arabic onto a pliable paper carrier that may be cut and formed to allow artistic freedom in the third dimension; the result being a unified  watercolour.

Prue Bishop was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, at a time when her father Major George Nelson Taylor OBE TD MA Cantab, a historian and accountant, was engaged in post-WW2 Germany. Her mother Mary Taylor (daughter of a renowned ophthalmologist Dr John Burdon-Cooper ) was one of the first women to have a Cambridge University Degree in Modern Languages fully recognised. Prue Bishop's secondary education was at Westonbirt School, and at this time her parents purchased and restored the medieval Elsdon Tower in Northumberland.

After a four-year course of study she was awarded a Diploma in Art and Design by Newcastle upon Tyne College of Art and Industrial Design (now the University of Northumbria), obtaining first class passes in all practical subjects and registered as a designer by the  Council of Industrial Design, one of her designs being displayed in the then Design Centre in London's Haymarket.

Her first job was as a designer for Caravans International in Newmarket near Cambridge working under the founder  Sam Alper and with Mrs Alper.

Following post-graduate study at the University of Leeds she became a Qualified Teacher, being then appointed Art, Craft and Design teacher at  Ripon Grammar School, Yorkshire.

Her academic achievements were recognised by the award of a Bachelor of Arts Degree by the then  Council for National Academic Awards.

Her early studies were influenced by some of the fundamental thinking behind the work of the sculpture lecturer Fenwick Lawson, whose own influence may be traced to  Jacob Epstein, and by the processes adopted by  Pablo Picasso embraced by other lecturers. Central to Lawson's sculptures is that the artwork should emerge from and relate to the material from which it is made. Taking up this theme and combining it with Picasso's innovative processes, Prue Bishop perceived a direct link between nature's natural processes and those that she would devise for herself as a designer-artist.

In the 20 years from 1980, the family home was a chalet in the Alps near Annecy, surrounded by high mountain peaks; a region she already knew intimately from over 10 years of skiing and walking. Initially, she used wood-veneer to make pictures of mountains, streams, rock and ice, where the wood-grain depicted stratified rock, pools of water and so on. In 1999 she exhibited a selection of these works in London at The Society of Women Artists, founded in about 1855,  and also at the Mall Galleries sponsored by  John Laing. All her work sold, going almost entirely to the USA.

She continued to develop her own concept of imitating natural processes, by reviving a love of watercolour that stretched back to her childhoodand and her paternal grandfather George Pike Taylor and his love of the Northumbrian countryside, notably around Wooler and  Norham.

By using paper instead of wood, she was able to introduce the entire colour spectrum, whilst retaining the third dimension, thereby opening a door to considerable further development.

In 2001, Winsor & Newton quickly recognised the innovative nature of her work and sponsored her with materials. Over the next three years she exhibited the new works widely: including at the Gloucester Festival, the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts, and several times at London’s Westminster Hall Gallery. In 2001 and later years her works were exhibited at the prestigious Grand Prix International de la Peinture à l’Eau in France where she was publicly commended as a painter ‘of considerable international repute’.

In 2009, 2010 and 2011 she supported international children in need at the 50-nation International Art Exhibition in the Palais des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, where she was joint-curator of the exhibition.

Central to her success is experimentation to push the boundaries of watercolour into new areas by trying out advances that continue to be made with pigments. She has become a specialist in the origin and effects of pigments, mixing many herself, and she is particularly appreciative of the technical support that she has received over the past decade from Dr Georg Kremer and his staff at Kremer Pigmente in Germany.

In parallel with her own artwork, she has become an expert in the works of JMW Turner, providing subjects for many of his previously unrecognised watercolours and sketches notably in the French, Italian and Swiss Alps and the Chartreuse Mountains. Her research papers are published in London's The British Art Journal.

She personally designed, supervised and assisted with the construction of a new art-gallery and home just outside Geneva. “La Galerie” was opened in 2006 and is now her centre for the production of ever-more interesting, innovative and exciting work.

Her works are in private collections mainly in the USA, Switzerland and France. A comprehensive presentation of both her artistic and academic work is to be found on the pruart.com Web Site.