Andi is a figurative artist. Her inspiration comes from the human body, colours, natural organic shapes and landscapes. Two objects found on a beach have inspired her work for the past thirty years. Key to her palette is a piece of rust which came off a chair, which she’s still got it in her sketch book. The rust is evident throughout her work in yellow ochre, burnt umber and the decaying vert de gris. Her inspiration for form comes from the melted shapes of a driftwood-like deformed plastic canister washed up on a beach on the Isle of Wight.

Recently, Andi has been drawn to alcohol inks because when they interact with the alcohol, they have an organic quality. The colours remind her of rust and the Devon cliffs and the sea of her childhood. Much of her work centres around the female human form. Andi says, “I love the contours: they’re organic, and my pictures celebrate female bodies. I love the way the skin falls over the bone and the contours it creates. It’s about how the colours fall onto the body to create a 3D effect.”

Although her work is different to Egon Schiele, she feels drawn to his use of strong contours. Other influences include Lucian Freud and Jenny Saville. Saville’s work after leaving university inspired Andi because of the realism and grotesque rather than beautiful nudes, as well as Saville’s references to Renaissance artists such as da Vinci and Raphael through the poses she used. Andi has always loved Da Vinci’s sketchbooks she also takes inspiration from the Pre-Raphaelites. Further inspiration, uniting body landscape, comes from Henry Moore’s primitive and abstract colours and contours.