Debra Stroud

Debra Stroud has always applied the creative side of her brain to a multitude of tasks for as long as she cares to remember. The would-be James Dyson made a habit of sending off her invention blueprints to countless toy manufacturers as a child, and on one occasion she even received an encouraging response. Triang, a long-standing games manufacturer, afforded Stroud positive feedback on her envisaged – and diagram enclosed designs – for an all enclosed sledge which was encapsulated in what she describes as a gyroscopic pod type thing, which essentially ensured that the occupant maintained a stable position throughout the snowy hill descending experience. Although stopped short of actually suggesting that she should approach the patent people. However the (now) hugely popular contemporary landscape artist did receive a doll’s cot in exchange for her product design offering, so all was not lost.

Born in Guildford, Stroud’s first attempt at creativity took place at a very early age, when at just two and a half years she peeled off the nursery freeze that her mother had painstakingly applied to the wall just minutes earlier; citing ‘artistic differences’ perhaps. Creativity in its every embodiment was at the fulcrum of Stroud’s school life in Guildford, where music, drama and of course, art were essential parts of the daily curriculum at the time. As a young teenager, Stroud was privy to the habitual coursework of photography students at the town’s School of Art, and mightily impressed grabbed as much leafleted information about the course as possible to take home with her. Unfortunately for her, Stroud’s father wasn’t anywhere near as impressed and exclaimed then and there that this wouldn’t be deemed a suitable course of action for his daughter when the time came. Met with this unexpected and soul-destroying disapproval Stroud lost heart and left school at her first opportunity, only furthering her education much later when she returned to higher education to study Psychology at Sussex University in Brighton; on completion of which she headed to London to study Philosophy.

In the intervening years Stroud held down a number of different roles, although none of which were closely related to her more natural creative fields, with the notable exception of her period as a freelance photographer for the Windsor Express. Otherwise Stroud worked predominantly in the arena of sales and marketing for a host of companies, amongst which were Thames Water, as well as being a weekly air courier to New York with global parcel delivery company, DHL. Elsewhere, and Stroud worked in the noise pollution department for a local authority.

At various points in her career and life in general, Stroud has been fortunate enough to travel extensively, and has found herself in locations in which she’s been able to draw much inspiration from. From South Africa and the Seychelles to California and beyond, yet typically Stroud’s favourite place to find her creative self is in the South West of England. Having spent many a childhood holiday on both Devon and Cornwall’s exceptional and popular coastlines, peppered with an infinite array of sandy beaches, Stroud has often returned to the scene of such wonderful memories from her youth. In the artist’s own words, Stroud laments; “The thunder of the crashing waves, salt spray and smell of the sea is a very energising force, firing my enthusiasm to recreate the essence of it all on canvas”. Stroud enlightens us with more insights into her greatest inspirations by adding; “The sea and the elements that surround it, its rhythms, tides, the sky it reflects, and the enormity of its oceans. The mystery, the colour, the winds and its great unknown depths” are the elements which captivate her and move her to paint.

Favouring watercolours and oil over any alternative materials, Stroud admits that both offer very different illustrative outlooks to her typical pictorial pieces, and mood plays a huge role in deciding which composition will be forged in what medium at that specific time. She also insists on painting while surrounded with peace an d quiet, that often forgotten and hard to locate commodity, which she says affords her the focus that her paintings demand. To Stroud, painting in the fashion that she does allows her to convey her innermost feelings then and there, at the outset of the visual study, and she hopes that more often than not the overriding graphical expression portrayed comprises hope, warmth, spirit and energy in equal abundance.

Once she had established herself as an artist, in didn’t take long for Stroud to catch the attention of the contemporary art world’s most prominent movers and shakers. And amongst those, and a company with a fine heritage of taking artist’s levels to that next phase, is Washington Green; the fine art publishers who are arguably the most successful of the breed here in the UK. With their commercial clout, full support and enviable network of art galleries throughout the land, Stroud’s work was soon being recognised and celebrated far and wide. To date, a total of some 75 individual limited edition prints based on Stroud originals have been published in collaboration with Washington Green, while Stroud has garnered acknowledgement amongst her peers and within the industry as well. Not least when in 2005 she was adjudged to be The Fine Art Guild’s ‘Best Up and Coming Artist’, followed a year later by being awarded the title of ‘Best Published Artist’ by the same respected body.