Annabel Gault

Annabel Gault (b. 1952, West Sussex) is known for landscape paintings and drawings made in a wide range of media, often working directly from the landscape en plein air. Her work is characterised by a freshness and immediacy of observation, whether responding to the coast and countryside of East Suffolk, her own garden, or landscapes encountered on her travels.

Gault studied at West Surrey College of Art from 1973 to 1977 before continuing at the Royal Academy Schools from 1977 to 1980. Since completing her studies she has worked across painting, drawing and printmaking, using oil, gouache, watercolour, ink, charcoal and oil stick on paper and canvas. She has also made monotypes and etchings, particularly of trees, as well as plaster reliefs into which she draws directly while the surface is still wet.

Landscape has remained at the centre of her practice. Gault lives and works in coastal East Suffolk, where the surrounding countryside, seascape and her own garden provide recurring subjects. She works predominantly outdoors, often in changing or difficult weather conditions, while drawing forms a parallel strand of her practice rather than serving as preparation for paintings. She has often worked in oil on paper, sometimes on a large scale, preparing heavy sheets with gesso before taking them into the landscape.

Gault has travelled specifically to paint in a wide range of locations, including Cooper Creek in Australia, New Mexico, the Isle of Jura, Tresco in the Isles of Scilly, Ballinskelligs in County Kerry and Cassis in southern France. She returned to New Mexico on three occasions, often painting directly from the landscape in the early morning or evening. Some larger works from these trips were subsequently developed in the studio from memory and from paintings made on the spot.

A significant strand of her work has been large-scale drawing. This began during three winter visits to the Tresco Botanical Gardens, where she had originally intended to paint but instead turned to drawing. Further works followed in her own Suffolk garden in the spring of 2011, while the final drawings in the group were made in the studio away from the subject. She worked in charcoal, ink, gouache and graphite, and has described the directness and simplicity of working in black and white as an especially freeing experience.

By 2014 Gault was moving back into colour and towards a greater degree of abstraction. Writing for her Redfern exhibition that year, Martin Gayford noted that, while she continued to work outdoors from direct observation, she had also begun making paintings in the studio from accumulated visual memory. Gault herself described these works as being more concerned with “handwriting”. Gayford also drew attention to her admiration for Constable’s sketches from nature and to the way her paintings could suggest leaves, branches, foliage and light without describing them literally.

The critic Andrew Lambirth has written of Gault’s “true understanding of the moods and hues of nature”, noting the balance in her work between the “vigorous sweep and drive of the paint” and a precision of drawing.

Gault has exhibited widely since the 1970s. Her first solo exhibition at The Redfern Gallery was held in 1993, and she has exhibited regularly with the gallery since. Annabel Gault: New Work was shown at The Redfern Gallery in 2013, and in 2023 Annabel Gault: Drawings was held at the Stable Block at Snape Maltings Concert Hall, Suffolk, bringing together a group of large-scale drawings. Her work is held in public collections including the Arts Council Collection, the British Museum, the Government Art Collection and Hampshire County Council.

Annabel Gault is represented by The Redfern Gallery.