Vibrant Britain in Acrylic · Bristol
Jenny Urquhart is a Bristol-based painter whose vibrant, life-affirming acrylics have become a familiar sight across the city and the wider South West. Her work pulls together two threads that have run through her life: a deep love of the British landscape, and a scientist’s eye for how light, weather, and season change a place from one visit to the next.
She started painting in 2010, after a ten-year career as a Bristol secondary-school biology teacher. Entirely self-taught, she works mostly in acrylic but happily reaches for collage, ink, mixed media, and resin when a piece needs it — which is why no two corners of her catalogue look quite alike. Bristol cityscapes with hot-air balloons drifting above the Suspension Bridge sit alongside Cornish coast paths, snowy Clifton fox-tracks, and bluebell woods at Leigh.
Her commission list is unusually wide. Jenny has presented Sir David Attenborough with a painting of Bristol on the day he was given Freedom of the City; the Earl and Countess of Wessex own her work; so does Bukayo Saka.
One commission she still talks about with affection: a piece for Sir Andrew Motion’s war poem The Mower, painted for the cover of Oxford Today and later chosen as the cover for a commemorative edition of Lord Moran’s The Anatomy of Courage. Most days, though, she’s in the studio painting whatever’s in her head — chasing the warm memory of a particular view.
— “If I don’t create anything for a few days I start to get withdrawal symptoms. I just absolutely love making pictures.”
Five paintings that walk you across her range — Leigh Woods through the seasons, the Clifton skyline in the snow, and Bristol itself rebuilt twice in cut paper, words, and balloons. Each one printed by us as a giclée edition on Redcliffe Watercolour.
Redcliffe have been printing my work for years — the colour is true, the paper has the right weight, and Thomas and the team are a pleasure to work with. It’s the quality I want my customers to take home.
Jenny Urquhart · on working with Redcliffe
Jenny’s work lives or dies on colour — bluebell purples, autumn ochres, the sharp white of fresh snow against the dark stone of the Clifton bridge. The job of a print is to keep all of that intact. The paper she chooses is Redcliffe Watercolour, made under our own house brand and used across her catalogue.
Our house brand fine-art paper · Group C
Hand-finished in our Bristol studio since 1982. Employee-owned. Hahnemühle & Canson Certified Print Studio.
Whether you work in acrylic, oil, watercolour, mixed media, or photography, we’ll help you find the right paper to do justice to your originals. Order an archival giclée print, request a free file check, or browse our full range of Hahnemühle, Canson, St Cuthberts Mill, and Redcliffe house-brand papers.