Rebecca Guyver, born 1960, grew up in New York City and is a graduate in painting and drawing from Stanford University. Rebecca also has an MA in education from Anglia Ruskin. She has worked with children and adults in a range of settings to explore materials and respond to ideas.
Rebecca learned the art of egg tempera painting while drawing scholar with the New English Art Club from Mick Kirkbride NEAC and Ruth Stage NEAC. Rebecca has been hooked ever since and sets up tableaus of objects, fabric, flowers from her garden in her narratives of colour where enchanting things happen.
Rebecca shows regularly in East Anglia, at the Mall Galleries (Pastel Society, NEAC, Society of Women Artists, Discerning Eye, Figurative Art Now). She has also shown in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.
I was taught by Bay Area Painters to forget what I know every time I pick up a brush. I have learned that I prefer to work from life but let my imagination and the aesthetic of the painting guide me beyond slavishly copying a motif.
I feel excited when I begin assembling the objects I will paint. Sometimes I have a title or the kernel of an idea I might want to explore, but mostly I assemble objects in a completely intuitive way. Moving objects, substituting fabric, changing my point of view, until I feel there is harmony, tension and what I am looking at hints at a story. I think of painting as tuning an instrument. I correct until it ‘sings’.
My work is predominately studio based but I have a sketchbook practice of altered books which I draw in with pastel to create memories of places I have been.