I used to live in London as a practicing artist and a teacher at St Martin’s College of Art and my artistic concerns were mainly political and sociological. Now I live in France opposite a lake and a grove of trees with a river at the bottom of my garden I have become a ruralist; curiously I realise in the tradition of English ruralists, Edward Arthur Wilson, Paul Nash and Samuel Palmer. Many years ago, I was taught by the etcher Paul Drury who said the pastoral landscape was in the blood of all English artists and, given the opportunity and I suppose the right views, we couldn’t help but record landscape. This is what I have been doing for a year and half and have produced thirty major landscape images. I always produce thumbnail sketches as I was taught in the 1960’s and then work these up to small paintings before moving onto a larger canvas. It is these small paintings I am exhibiting this year at Lloyds. Philippa Beale October 2010