Libbi Gooch is a self-taught artist living and working from her studio in Speldhurst nestled in the beautiful Kent Weald countryside. Her advent into art resulted from an epiphany when she walked into a small gallery and was convinced she could paint just as well as the canvases on show.  She asked the gallery owner if she could present some works, went home, got started and has never looked back.

At first she experimented in oils for their depth and quality.  Her earlier paintings were predominantly Turneresque large landscapes and seascapes. The advantage of the oils is that they don’t dry too quickly “You can move oils around, I love everything about them, especially the movement.”

She works to music which sets the tempo for the way she paints, confidently using tools including brushes, palette knives, fingers and rags.  Her work is a very personal and instinctive response to the power of nature and the environment, the subsequent feelings evoked and the lingering memories. Her work is less about reality and more about the remembered or imagined. It is an impression of the environment based on the emotion that the memory of being there conjures up. She works with immense energy and a sense of immediacy to try and commit those fleeting impressions to canvas.