The Artists

Bern Ross - Publicity Officer

I was born into a creative family and learned from an early age the importance of improvising and recycling, so I’ve always been inventive. I trained in art and design before the real education of bringing up a family; and I’ve made good use of my painting and drawing skills throughout a variety of vocations.

In my thirties I trained as an adult-education tutor and taught evening classes. I wrote hundreds of articles about creative play, which were published internationally, over a number of years. One of my books is entitled “I Wish I Could be Artistic”.

My greatest strength for some twenty years was as a writer and writing course tutor. I’ve worked as Fiction Editor and Literary Editor for an independent publisher, have designed book contents and book covers, naturally progressing to publishing my own books and sometimes those of other people.

Over the years I’ve taken part in various arts events, not least as a member of a rural Arts Council in East Anglia, and put on displays and exhibitions of my work (written and artwork) as well as performing spoken recitals of poetic prose.

In 2007 it was time to move on:- various circumstances combined to make it possible for me and my husband to leave our home in East Anglia and emigrate to North East Scotland, something we’d been wanting to do for many years.

The one thing I couldn’t shake off, through all the mayhem of change, was my creative temperament; and once settled in Stonehaven I set about exploring it through a website, Artspur <<http://artspur.blogspot.com/>>.

Now that I’m all written out, it feels right to be painting and drawing again and I seem to need to do it every day. What inspires me is fresh air, sea, big skies and countryside so I will paint where-ever I live but the exceptional friendship and camaraderie I find in other artists in North East Scotland is special.

You can see some of my earlier work in progress on Art on the Burn <<http://artontheburn.blogspot.com/>> and buy anything from my new website at <<http://www.bern-ross-abstracts.co.uk> and of course I’ll love to meet you in my studio during the week of NEOS
<<http://www.northeastopenstudios.co.uk/>>