Sally Elizabeth French was born in Yorkshire in the 1960s, educated in Yorkshire and Manchester, gaining a BA degree in The Creative Arts, Fine Art in 1984. (Manchester) Her tutors were Professor S. Jordan and graduates of The Royal College of Art. After travelling in Europe and working as an art teacher in the USA, she returned to her native Yorkshire in 1985 and settled in the ancient market town of Holmfirth, where she is the 6th generation of her family to live; her great, great, great grand parents lived in Choppards. Here, she developed her decorative picturesque style of landscape and portrait painting, and found she was being approached to undertake commissions. At aged 29, she sold her first major work to a collector from Aberdeen, a portrait of Claire Tyas, titled ‘Nature Woman.’ Producing watercolour sketches en plein air, she returns to the studio to complete a piece in oils. Her philosophy is to create an impact of jewel – like colour as a memory - vision of an image. Decorative, self expressive, her work is inspired by Gustav Klimt and the French Impressionists as well as van Gogh. Some pieces verge into abstractionism, where others convey mysteriousness. Visitors of all ages and from all backgrounds come to view the paintings at Austonley Art Gallery. One recent visitor from Derbyshire said, “If I could afford, I’d buy the whole lot.”

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