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 export sales manager for 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, over the last twelve years or so, 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 but for the last eight years figures of varying degrees of reality have appeared as the central themes. The stories my paintings tell are enigmatic and are often autobiographical.

I decided to return to live in England in July 2001 and since then I have held four very successful solo exhibitions and a number of group shows in Oxfordshire, London and Munich. I have settled very well into living in Banbury where I also work as Exhibition Co-ordinator and curator for The Mill Arts Centre.

Claire Reika Wright
Banbury 2006