Jean Hobson

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Painter and Print maker

Jean is a watercolourist who uses the medium in an unusually bold and vibrant way which comes from a love of strong colours and a passionate desire to make a positive statement in her painting.

Jean was born in Wallasey and graduated at Liverpool College of Art before moving to Scarborough. There she taught and ran a small hotel – The Flower in Hand -overlooking the harbour while bringing up her two daughters. She became renowned as a vegetarian chef, played accordian with local blues bands and after opening a studio, exhibited widely in London and across the north of England.

She moved to Glossop in 1992 to concerntrate more on her painting, attracted by the dramatic landscape of the High Peaks, the earthy vitality found in the mill town and by it’s accessibility to numerous cities.

For the past three years Jean has been looking towards the changing face of Manchester.

Not only has she been painting and drawing the people who live and work in this great city, but she has also been recording the old buildings due for demolition before they disappear for ever, and the new buildings as they emerge, celebrating their optimism and inventiveness as they herald in the new era. Studying both, she has explored the different ways in which old and new exploit the materials of their age.

From these photographs and sketches Jean has produced a series of paintings, prints and drawings which sympathetically record the places that have captured her imagination and which she feels form a unique view of Manchester. Hobson says that she paints these scenes because she finds them ‘absorbing and unique. The city is developing constantly and the skyline changes day by day but it is the contrast between past, present and future of the city’s architecture that really captures my imagination.’