Biddy Peppin

I prefer painting objects that are discarded, worn out, and with little or no monetary value (I dislike consumerism and am uninterested in traditional ideas of ‘beauty’ or 'value'). My work is metaphysical in that it addresses the passing of time and inevitable decay, but not symbolic in the sense of particular objects signifying individual ideas. There’s an element of chance (for example, in the way that different fabrics make their own shapes) and I welcome this randomness.
I taught art history for many years and my paintings engage with the ideas of past artists and movements. For example, early Modernists often celebrated the flatness of the painted surface in their compositions, and this concern is central to my work. However as Harold Cohen (a tutor at the Slade) once said, artists should aim to reach a place where there are no signposts – where the aesthetic frameworks and preferences of others are left behind, and you take overall responsibility for the decisions you make. For me, this is a guiding principle.
I work in oil on cotton canvas, using white spirit to mix the paint (it does not discolour, and produces a fairly matt surface which I like). I’ve tried to develop a painting technique that’s direct but unasser...

BA Fine Art (Slade), MA History of Art (Birkbeck College, London University), MA Fine Art (University of East London).
At the Slade in the early 60s I was given, as a prize, ‘Creative Development’, a book by the sculptor and Slade tutor Reg Butler, in which he claimed that women artists’ creativity was generally the result of a frustrated maternal instinct. This depressing pronouncement chimed with prevailing pre-feminist views, and I didn’t question it. Unclear, after graduating, how to progress in my own work, I became involved in starting the Drury Lane and Robert St. Arts Labs (centres for radical experiment in the arts), then moved on to parenthood and Art History teaching, initially on several American university 'study abroad' programmes in London, and afterwards, as a Senior Lecturer, at the University of East London.
I’ve been painting more or less full-time since 2004, in London and Somerset.

Past exhibitions:-
2017, September - October. Open Studio (with Robert Curtis and Will Vaughan), Somerset Art Weeks Festival.
2017, July 'Observation' - 2-artist show, with Angela Allen, at Spitalfields Studios, Greatorex St, London E1
2017, June. Open Studio, Cockhill
2016, June. Open Studio, Cockhill
2016, April. Spitalfields Studios, 1-person show (Whitechapel Art Gallery ‘First Thursdays’)
2015, August. Open Studio, Cockhill
2014, September. Open Studio,Cockhill (Somerset Art Weeks)
2013, Beckford Fine Art exhibition, Bath, Somerset.
2012, September. Open Studio, Cockhill (Somerset Art Weeks)
2010, September. Open Studio, Cockhill (Somerset Art Weeks)
2008, September. Open studio, Cockhill (Somerset Art Weeks)
2006, September. Open Studio, Cockhill (Somerset Art Weeks)
2006, Philoscope Group exhibition, APT Gallery, Deptford, London
2005, Philoscope Group exhibition, RKB Gallery, Borough, London.