Artist. Abstract, new media and figurative paintings. Banbury, Oxfordshire, England

Claire Reika Wright - An Artist’s Tale

I was born in London right at the end of WW2 and grew up in Croydon, Surrey. Always interested and fascinated by painting I was lucky enough to have a step father who was a graduate of The Slade School of Art and who taught the subject at Royal Russell School. William Wright was an incredibly gifted artist and a sensitive enough teacher to generally leave me to my own devices, show by example and only occasionally exhort me to look and draw what I saw as faithfully as I could! At school I was taught in a similar fashion although when I was about 14 I do remember being sent out of the classroom because I had used too much red in painting a picture of the Fire of London!


From about the age of 22 I realized that all I really wanted to do was paint. From then on every move I made was secretly geared towards my being able to have the time and energy to paint the pictures that I knew were inside me.


After a number of eventful years which included getting married, going to Teacher Training College, studying art, working as an office cleaner, taxi driver and eventually as an export executive for Eschmann England, a large medical instrument manufacturer, I moved with my young family to Perth, Western Australia in 1974.


I painted whenever I could and in the late seventies and eighties, held a number exhibitions of abstract works. Finally in 1994, once our two sons had taken off to follow their dreams as musicians, I took the plunge and committed myself full time to earning a living as professional artist. I have,since then, painted almost continually and now have works in private collections and galleries around the world. I began by painting only landscapes of the rugged Western Australian South West; then for eight years figures of varying degrees of unreality appeared as the central themes. The wheel has now turned full circle and I am back to painting abstracts! The stories my paintings tell are enigmatic and are often autobiographical - maybe even the abstracts!!.


I decided to return to live in England in July 2001 and since then I have held four very successful solo exhibitions and many group shows in the Home Counties, London and Munich. After five enjoyable and informative years curating exhibitions for The Mill Arts Centre I am now concentrating full time on my painting.


Claire Reika Wright, Banbury 2010
 

Claire Reika Wright