Shirley Foote trained at the West of England School of Art and subsequently worked mainly in ceramics until 1995 when she returned to painting full time. She lives and works near Prussia Cove, Cornwall.

“Foote’s paintings are essentially abstract in presentation, but are openly informed by her experience of both urban and rural landscape. She has developed a set of recurring, intuitive motifs and signature colours that owe their genesis to the artist’s observation of natural and man-made phenomena. These manifest themselves as sensitively composed and non-confrontational, balanced images in which bright jewels of colour are invariably set in a pale, muted and grounding field.

"On closer inspection her seemingly effortless painting reveals the considered working and re-working of an artist who approaches each painting as an explorative journey without pre-determined destination. The overall effect is to separate and distil elements of perceived beauty and to represent them as independent cameos of distinct celebration.”