Maureen Connett

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About me

I trained as a painter in St Albans with Maurice Feild, a long-serving tutor at the Slade School and a member of the Euston Road Group. I was Senior Researcher at St John’s College, Oxford, where I worked on the sketchbooks of Robert Bevan, a fine painter of the Sussex landscape.
The publication of my research in Apollo and other specialist journals eventually resulted in a book: Walter Sickert and the Camden Town Group (David & Charles, 1992) and to a change of career from teaching to journalism. I am Honorary Research Fellow at the Slade School, University College London.

My subjects are the natural world and the built environment: historic Hastings buildings and landscapes such as the Brassey Institute, the pier, East and West Hill, Alexandra Park, All Saints’ Church and the Old Town. I paint in watercolour, oils and acrylics and considers my work to be both personal and within the great tradition of landscape painting. I have held solo exhibitions in St Albans, Oxford and London and my work is in private collections in this country, Europe and Australia. I moved to Hastings where I am currently Artist in Residence at the newly restored Burtons’ St Leonards Gardens.

I am also a jazz vocalist - ‘one of the great voices of the British jazz scene’ (Time Out) - and have my own band. I have appeared at the Rye International Festival, while still continuing to sing on the London circuit. I am also a member of the London Orpheus Choir.