ABOUT THE ARTIST
STATEMENT
Jude Evans is a contemporary painter exploring beauty, atmosphere and the emotional
power of the natural world. Working intuitively with bold mark-making, layered surfaces and harmonious colour, she seeks to capture something beyond representation — a feeling of energy, freedom and wonder. Art is a way of making sense of life's experiences — love, loss, joy — not through literal storytelling but through colour and mood.
Jude aim to make work that balances drama with harmony and abstraction with emotional truth.
At the heart of her practice is a desire to create paintings that offer something generous: moments of delight, intrigue and inspiration. In a world that can sometimes feel overwhelming, Jude offers an invitation to reconnect with the beauty and mystery of being alive.
MY STORY
I’ve been an artist all my life, creating drawings and paintings and taking photos. I was born in 1958 in Brighton, where my parents ran a pub, just around the corner from the Royal Pavilion. We moved to a pub in Worthing when I was five. I was a very anxious and introverted child, I hated school and just wanted to stay at home and draw. At secondary school I became completely disengaged from my education, I was open about my contempt for the school and was kicked out of art lessons for arguing with the teacher.
I left school at 16 with no qualifications and spent the next ten years unhappily loafing about. After hitting rock bottom, the only way was up and I decided to do something positive about my life. I had an idea about becoming an art historian and working somewhere wonderful, like the National Gallery,
so I returned to education as a mature student. I left Worthing to study art history at Middlesex University, I got my degree in 1989 and managed to get a job at the National Gallery (although not as an art historian). About four years later, I quit my job and did Foundation Studies at Chelsea College of Art, then began my career in magazine publishing, ending up as assistant editor of Art Quarterly magazine. I continued with my art while living in London and seascapes kept cropping up in my work.
I realised how much I missed living by the sea. By 2012 I’d had enough of living in London and decided to come back to Worthing to spend more time on developing my art practice.
EXHIBITIONS
Jude was a member of South London Women Artists, she also showed work in the Dulwich Festival and exhibited with Frickleton Fine Art. When she moved back to Worthing in 2015, she joined the
Adur Art Collective and exhibited at Skyway Gallery in Shoreham by Sea as part of the
Adur Art Trail. She had her first solo show last year at Worthing's Montague Gallery, which was featured in the July issue of Sussex Life.
In May this year she showed work at the Sussex Art Fair at Goodwood.
