Gill Bustamante

Born: 1962

Hometown: London

Based in: Forest Row, East Sussex

My name is Gill Bustamante and I paint large colourful semi-abstract magical landscapes and wildlife paintings in oil on canvas. Whilst my paintings are mostly inspired by the Sussex landscapes I see around me, I reflect any landscape or seascape I have ever visited. My painting style fuses magical, colourful and ethereal elements along with Impressionist, semi-abstract, Art Nouveau and something I term ‘Memory Impressionism’. This is where I go walking somewhere rural, look at and absorb the things I see and experience, and then come home and try to capture an 'echo' of the place from memory, including any wildlife I may have seen.

My paintings reflect, for me, the spiritual echoes of beautiful places such as those in Sussex and the English countryside generally and it always fascinates me what emerges onto a canvas from a simple memory. All of them have a story attached and are named once I have completed the painting and can see more clearly what the story is!

I completed a fine art degree in Brighton in 1983 and I have painted since I was three. I love what I do and consider myself very fortunate to have found a way to ‘work’ for a living that is actually really playing.

Painting always makes me happy along with cake, bunnies, driving erratically, BBC 6 music and totally irreverent comedy.