My paintings become a fusion of memories, observation, and imagination. A place where dreams and reality meet.

Elizabeth Haines has lived and worked in Pembrokeshire for over 50 years.
She originally trained as an illustrator, but over the years has gradually evolved a more flexible and imaginative way of working, an oblique and poetic evocation of landscape and the natural world. Working constantly in sketchbooks keeps a real and personal connection with nature and provides essential material on which to develop studio work. She often uses poetry as a starting point and for many years has explored music as an inspiration. Her paintings are characterised by rich colour, atmosphere, and a sense of inner light.

‘Many of my paintings are based on the Preseli Hills. They may evolve from studies of a particular place or anything else which seizes my attention.’

Elizabeth’s subjects evolve from things which she has seen and contemplated: sometimes she starts again on top of a discarded image, some of which may be retained as a kind of palimpsest. The subject may develop sooner or later as the work itself evolves, when the music of shape and colour take on the appearance of something she once saw or experienced, perhaps forgotten until that moment. Elizabeth works on it until it feels right, responding to the initial marks in a dialogue with the emerging image, enjoying the element of serendipity. Painting in the studio is often on a tightrope between the ‘real’ and the imaginary world.

Elizabeth says ‘I love the landscape but even more than landscape I love paint and using it lands you in all kinds of unexpected places.’